


Southend

by sirius



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, KAT-TUN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, NaNoWriMo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-30
Updated: 2012-03-30
Packaged: 2017-11-02 18:20:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 50,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/371952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirius/pseuds/sirius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for Nanowrimo 2008, another AU Japanese boyband fic! This time with an OC!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in 2008 and includes explicit sexual content as well as disturbing, supernatural content.

Where did it start?

The plane thing. The love of the sky. Destiny. 

Jin remembers running around in the paddy fields with his shirt pulled out behind him, pretending to be an plane. Planes don't come out to Kikajima very often and so his impression of their sound isn't particularly accurate. It entertains his brother; younger and sillier he doesn't know what a plane should sound like. He just watches Jin and copies him, hauling his jumper over his shoulders and running, head bowed, _vrooooooom_.

Sometimes they crash into each other. It makes them laugh and fall down.

Jin had always loved planes but in the end Reio chose differently. 

Where it ended.

Southend  
 _Part One_  


_March, 1945_

_Emiko_ , he wants to write. _You are flying on a cloudless day. You are tilting at sunlight. You are all I think about and what I least want to._

He writes down the darkest thoughts in his own head. To commit them to paper would be to commit them to memory, to accept them as his own emotions rather than reactions to his daily experiences. It's easy to convince himself of his hysteria when he's witnessing the things he's witnessing. To validate and make true these dark moments – to allow into his life the wet swell of longing and loneliness, would be a greater insanity. Yet sometimes when done with his head, he moves to paper.

_Emiko_ , he writes. _Everything continues here as normal. I don't know what's considered normal back at home but I am slowly beginning to embrace this lifestyle. The way my father always said that I would. So please – don't worry. I know that you're worrying, even when you say you're not. Your assurances mean nothing when your scribbles look like shit._

He rolls the thin paper into a ball and slides it along the ground, watching it collect dirt. He sits against one of the air hangers, where the air is cool and it's just possible to feel the breeze. It's not safe to sit in broad daylight, he knows that, but it's the only chance he gets to feel normal. To feel nostalgic – normal has redefined itself since signing up. Leaning against the cold metal tin he has a view of the sunrise, of the grey planes lined up ready and willing. Their flanks are hard and reliable, build by solid patriotic hands. He wishes he could say the same about himself.

_Emiko_ , he tries again. _Things here pass as they always do. The pilots think that the time is coming. They have felt this way for some time as you know. This thing that we do isn't a science, for all it involves the sciences. For all its talk of mechanics and angles and the formula for becoming the perfect missile. This thing is all heart. Is all soul. Is all we live and breathe and yet_ -

Another ball on the ground. It's hard to see the ink in the morning light and so he takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Writing to Emiko is harder than anything else he has to do here. Nothing is harder than taking out his pen and scratching down characters on a small piece of paper. Not the flying, not the preparation for death, not the grandiose sermons delivered by his superiors. Not even the beatings. Nothing is harder than to write untruths down into a letter and send it to the person that you love.

In the mornings, he thinks of Emiko most. He associates her with the morning time. Her hair is long and it flows. On a pillow it is a sunrise. It isn't particularly gorgeous, something that his friends would talk about. Not like a movie star or a girl conjured in their minds – nothing like that. Emiko's hair is ordinary except that when it fans out, it is the sunrise. Her cheeks glow like the dawn on apple trees. Rotund and healthy and good enough to eat. Emiko is the morning and so when he snatches these moments of dawn he thinks about her the most.

It makes it harder to write the letters. She wouldn't want poetry – she isn't that sort of person. He tried writing her poetry when they were younger and stupider and she laughed at him. She had the sort of laugh that rustled leaves in his stomach. That took his heart and squeezed it. She never liked his poetry – said it was overblown and too considered. Yet when he stops up the poetry, what he writes instead is clinical. 

_Emiko, soon it may be my turn to fly. Giving myself for my country is an honour, isn't it? Soon I hope to know that glory. I hope that you are safe and well._

She rarely writes back. He writes more to her than he receives back and he doesn't know what to make of that. Whether it means she loves him less each day or more each hour. Hard to say. The things she writes back aren't responses to his letters. Usually they ramble, a jumble of thoughts she's had in the last hour and squashed together for him. Sometimes when he mumbles her letters aloud he can hear her voice. Those are the worst moments. He wishes he could write to her in the same way – so that she could get the same sort of twisted comfort. Where her words are theism, his are theology (is this line atrocious? I've taken it out and put it back in six times!).

_Emiko_ , he writes, finally. There's a bell in the distance and it's a call to them all for movement. Progress. Nothing moves at a natural pace but like a relentless chugging beast. Some creature none of them can see.

_Emiko, I am writing this whilst sitting looking over the air-fields. I know that some day soon I will have to fly into this sky and that it will be the last time I ever see it. I breathe in the freshness of the grass and the wind and the air and to think of losing these things is unbearable. We all know that after death these feelings will no longer plague us, that our sensations will be dulled to all these petty things but to sit as a human being and willingly tell yourself not to breathe, not to think, not to see – can any man do that easily? Am I defective, or is this just as much a struggle for any other man? Could you do it?_

_I want to be the man that you deserve. I want to be a better man – the man who would embrace this without question. The man who would honour you appropriately. I don't think you want that, deep down. That you would have an honourable man over one whose feelings defied his country. I want to be the man who can put these thoughts out of his head. To be a god – that is what these people offer you and yet I'm not sure I'm ready to leave the earth behind. To be clearer and more honest with you – time is not on my side – it is hard to look on the world and know that soon, this will be no more. To touch the flowers and know that soon, their scent will be a memory._

_But it is harder to imagine that soon, I will no longer know you. I have not spent enough time getting to know what I will soon, in a split-second, forget._

_How can I forget what I don't know? How can I die before truly understanding what I'll leave behind?_

_These are the thoughts that keep me from my training. I want you to know that – damn you – you are restricting me from doing my duty for my country. You should be ashamed of yourself. Please write back. Even if this letter upsets you. I need you to put that aside and write back. I need to hear your voice again. I read your letters aloud and I need your voice. Please write._

_Jin._

 

The training is long and difficult. Jin wonders whether the others were as naïve as he was when he joined up. Whether it seemed as beautiful to them as it had to him. He can't sleep at night. During the day, there are long periods of reflection and sometimes he sleeps during these moments. In the dark, he never does. Across the land there are sounds of tumult, sounds he doesn't recognise. He longs for a moment's peace. A moment of calm reflection. Always there is the sound of war or the apprehension of the sound of war – where others have learned to block this out, to live with the white noise, Jin has not. 

He lies in his bunk and talks about it with the others that share the sleeping areas. Some of them are his friends, some of them are not. In these conditions even the pettiest problems still matter. Despite an impressive sell by the government, not all the pilots are friends and united by a common goal. Arguments occur often as men struggle over their own losses and loneliness. Over their own sense of purpose.

Ryo is one of Jin's closest friends. He is older than him but not by much and considered a liability. The only pilot on the base to have ever returned from a mission – he cited bad conditions on a cloudless day and is therefore ostracised from the main bunch. Fond of a challenge, Jin befriended him quickly during his induction.

“D'ya think,” he says, quietly, in the dark. “When the time comes, you'll be able to do it?”

Ryo turns over and Jin knows that he's thinking. Ryo moves when he thinks, as if his body controls his brain. Ryo is not a deep thinker but his instincts are strong. Jin respects that.

“I hope so,” he says, eventually. “I reckon that last time was...like an illness. A sudden sickness. A feeling of intense nausea. I had cold sweat running down my back and I knew – the time wasn't right. I hope that next time, when I'm up there, I feel as relaxed as everybody else. The bliss on some of their faces. I mean, fuck.”

Jin thinks back to the previous month. To Inoue and Genji and Hiroshi – all of the men who went out on their planes with expressions Jin had never seen on faces before. Almost post-coital. A kind of satisfaction and knowing, similar to being so inside somebody that you take on their identity and feel complete with being joined. Being joined with life, with the world, with everything. That sort of expression. 

“I don't think I have that in me,” he says, slowly. “That kind of bliss. Do you think you can only get it if you don't have it on land?”

Ryo shrugs. “I dunno,” he says. “Maybe. I know it's easier to push thoughts out of your mind if you don't have any good ones to begin with, right? I wish I didn't smoke. All I want is to smoke now that I can't. You have a woman – 'course it's hard for you to adjust to this.”

“Hiroshi was married,” Jin says. “He had a woman.”

“He can't have loved her that much then,” Ryo says, and they laugh. Not because it's appropriate but because it isn't – and they don't know any other way to deal with it. 

“Suppose so,” Jin says. “Or maybe he loved her in a way that I can't – you know. Maybe he's just a bigger guy than me.”

Ryo sniggers.

“Not like that,” Jin says. “You pervert.”

“There're different kinds of love,” Ryo says. “Hiroshi was a decade older than us. Maybe he understood honour in a way we don't. To me, it just doesn't make sense, no matter how much I want it to. Maybe it's the same for you.”

“I don't know how it honours her,” Jin says. “Me blowing myself up.”

Ryo thinks for a moment and there's a long heavy pause. “Well,” he says. “Means she made the right choice. Married a hero. She'll have something to be proud of.”

“Do you think that's enough?”

“'Course not,” Ryo says. “Fuck. She loves you. When the person you love dies, nothing's enough. Doesn't matter what they did, whether it was honourable or not – you just want them back. Maybe in time she could be proud of you. That you did what was right for your country and helped shift the scum out of it. That you saved her kids and her kids from a life of occupation. Maybe in the long-run.”

“Fuck,” Jin says. “I don't want to think about her having kids. That's selfish but I don't want her to have a life without me in it.”

“Yeah,” Ryo says. “I turned back when I started thinking about it. Does you no good, thinking. I wish they'd let me smoke. It clears my head. Stops me thinking.”

“If she were here,” Jin says. “What would she tell me?”

“To shut up,” Ryo says. “Come on. Women have needs. If she were here, she wouldn't want you droning on like this. Give it a rest.”

“Ah, fuck you,” Jin says. “I listen to you talk about Ami-”

“That's different,” Ryo says. “It's about sex. You're living vicariously through me.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “So?”

“So,” Ryo says. “I'm dealing with your emotions and shit. Doesn't that sound a whole lot less fun?”

“I guess so,” Jin says. “Think I should write her that kind of letter?”

Ryo shrugs, again. “Ami seems to like it,” he says. “Sometimes I worry about it getting intercepted but I guess they've got bigger things to worry about right now.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I might do that.”

“Beats all your awful poetry,” Ryo says. “You gotta toughen up. If you're gonna do this. I don't care if you do or don't – but either way, you gotta toughen up. Decide. Don't be like me. In limbo. Don't be there in that moment and cop out. There's nothing worse.”

“Sure there is,” Jin says. “Feeling the fear and still doing it. That'd be worse.”

“How d'ya figure?”

“Fear would be the last thing you'd experience,” Jin says. “It'd be the last thought in your head. That's not what you'd want. It's not what I'd want.”

“This isn't exactly how I want to die, anyway,” Ryo says. “Ideally. Works for some but not for me.”

“How do you want to die?”

Ryo sniggers, again. “There's only one way,” he says. 

“Yeah,” Jin says, a smile spreading across his face. The last time before he left for base, for missions, for this. The way Emiko tilted her head back and the gasping rolled out from under her throat. The way his kisses slide through her open mouth and down her bobbing chin. The way her kisses touched his lips and made him shiver inside her. The way they kissed through the shakes – the way he felt as though he might die. He would want to die like that. 

“Whatever it is you're thinking about,” Ryo says. “Write about that. When you write to her.”

“Why?” Jin says. 

“Because, damnit, Jin – there's all this crap in the world and anything that makes you curl your hands into fists like that, it's gotta be good. Right?”

 

As a kid, Jin rushed home from school to spend time with his friends and his brother. It was a given for a boy his age. With no memories of the war fought in Europe, Jin thought nothing of staying out until dark in the paddy fields near his house, chasing the other boys. Sometimes they'd come across scraps of metal and they'd play catch. It never occurred to him to think about the history behind it all. Of the planes that did leave Japan to fight, miles and miles beyond their consciousness.

The fields around his home were as long as they were wide – never-ending on any side. Plenty of space to explore, plenty of metal to find. Sometimes, he'd talk about life with his friends, as if anything was possible. He wanted to be an astronaut as a child. To see the stars, to understand secrets beyond the earth. The inadequacy of contemporary mathematics never interfered with this vision. Clear as the stars in the dark sky above, Jin was certain. One day, he would be up there with them. 

From time to time they noticed a girl hanging around by the fields. She'd sit on the ground and hang her head on her chin, just watching. She never showed any interest in joining in or in interfering – she just liked to watch. Jin knew enough about women to understand that he shouldn't pay them attention. Very few went to school with him and even fewer still impacted on his life. His mother had died when he was young and his dad showed no interest in replacing her. To Jin, women were transitory figures. Like fireflies – beautiful but not lasting. Once gone, you forgot their existence.

This girl wasn't beautiful. She wasn't anything – very tall or very short, gorgeous or ugly. She was average height with a baleful face and long, long hair. She'd sit and take things in and never speak and that made her seem like another bale of hay. Another tree. Another transitory thing that lived for a time and then wilted away with the changing seasons. 

“Hey,” one of his friends had said, after she'd joined them for a fifteenth afternoon. He just couldn't take it anymore, the constant audience. “What do you want?”

She'd shrugged. “It's a free country,” she'd said.

The boys had laughed. “Yeah,” they'd said. “That's funny.”

She'd just kept on looking, as if they hadn't reacted. Jin had been curious. As they continued on without him, he'd gone over, toed her shoe as if she were an animal. Sussing out her humanity. She'd looked at him without comment.

“You're always here,” he'd said. “Don't you get bored?”

“Do you?” she'd asked. 

“No,” he'd said, defensively. “But I know how to play. You just sit there. You're not wanted.”

“I like watching,” she'd said. “Isn't that what girls are supposed to do?”

“I dunno,” he'd said. “I don't know any.”

She'd held her eyes to his, tilted her head to one side. He'd pushed his hands into his pockets, shrugged his shoulders. Uncomfortable under her gaze, he'd tried to move away but found himself rooted to the spot. The expression on her face seemed to suggest she'd locked onto him and that was it. She wasn't going to stop until she'd taken what she wanted – not now, not _ever_.

“What do you want?” he'd asked.

“What's in your pockets?” she'd asked. 

He'd pulled his hands out, a scrap of metal in his hand. Rubbed round with the cocoon of his palm, he'd reluctantly held it up to the light. It had come from a plane crash in the area, years back. His father had kept it as a souvenir, given it to Jin when he showed interest in planes. She'd studied it with lidded eyes, showing no apparent interest other than the determination of her stare. 

“It's just a metal scrap,” he'd said, self-conscious. As if she was judging him, not the contents of his pockets.

She'd turned her eyes to him. “What do you do with it?” she'd asked.

“Throw it,” he says. “Catch it. Just that.”

“Give me a try,” she'd challenged him. He'd looked down into his hand, out as his friends. Little specks of coloured jumper on the horizon. The setting sun behind – Japan and its colours, its little pretty fireflies. 

“Alright,” he'd said. He'd never seen a girl who could throw worth a damn. When he'd handed over the scrap, their fingers had touched. The first time he'd touched a girl's hand wasn't exciting – wasn't anything, really, not anything like he'd expected. Her hand was slightly cold to the touch. 

She'd held the metal disc tight in her palm, closed her fingers around it with a kind of reverence. She'd drawn her breath in and with a quick motion of her wrist, sliced the scrap of metal across the field. Her breath out with it, he'd had to jump to the side and watch as it landed some twenty feet away.

“Alright,” he'd said. “So you can throw.”

She'd shrugged. “I just watched you do it. That's all.”

“You can do anything once you've watched it?”

“Not everything, idiot,” she'd said. “But some things. A lot of things. Don't you find that?”

He'd thought about it and thought about it – he'd always been the type to rush into things. Never to consider them first. Never to watch somebody else. An astronaut flies his own craft, he'd always thought. He's nose-up to the stars, nobody else doing it for him. 

“No,” he'd said. “I prefer to do things myself.”

She'd nodded. “I understand,” she'd said. “Some of us have to make the discoveries. Others-”

“Just copy,” he'd said.

“No,” she'd said. “Others take their methods and improve on them. Make them better. Like me and your scrap metal – that was better than any of your throws, right?”

He'd stormed off to collect his treasure, unable to come up with a response. Trudging through the grass he'd tried to understand what she was getting at – why she'd even care about beating him at anything. Why it mattered. When he returned, she was still standing in the same place, still watching. Still the same expression on her face.

“You look like you've lived forever, old woman,” he'd retorted. “How can there be anything left for you to watch?”

 

 

Ryo's face the next morning is roughly what Jin would describe as _painful_.

“You got a letter,” he says, dully. “Didn't you?”

“Heh,” Ryo says, shrugging on his clothes. They're supposed to be attending their daily sermon before flight practice. They're late for it – nothing new there. A guy they call Turtle hangs back, disapproving and senior despite being younger than both of them. 

“You're not supposed to have your post yet,” Kame says. “Not until the end of the meeting.”

Ryo ignores him, adjusting his jacket. Jin takes hold of one lapel and grabs him in, growling, “was it _that_ kind of letter?”

“Of course,” Ryo grins. “Man, you need to get in on this. Makes me feel all patriotic inside, knowing she's waiting for me and my great big-”

“Alright, alright,” Jin says. “There're kids present.”

“I'm not a kid,” Kame retorts. “And you're _late_.”

“So,” Ryo says. “How far have you got, kid?”

Kame flushes a bit and starts tucking his shirt into his trousers. Mumbling something about professional advancement and having other things on his mind, he's cut through by Ryo's laugh. 

“Jin,” he says. “Seriously, is this one for real? How can you be considering giving up...everything when you haven't even-?”

“There're more things in life,” Kame says, gruffly. 

“There's gotta be a girl,” Ryo says. “There's a girl for everybody. Everybody here has a girl – even if you didn't like anybody when you arrived. Time and...this thing...it makes you look back with generous eyes. Plenty of guys fall in love after leaving the girls behind.”

“That's stupid,” Kame says. “Don't you think that's stupid?”

“I don't know,” Ryo says. “They tell me a lot of stupid things are logical, here. Like death. Like welcoming death. Like leaving things behind is a great thing. Don't you think _that's_ stupid?”

“I think it's stupid,” Jin says. 

“You guys don't take anything seriously,” Kame says. “Jin did, before he met you.”

“I did,” Jin says. “I'm just realising that I was wrong to.”

“You're like kids playing a game,” Kame says. “Why would you pretend when _this_ is serious? You're gonna die, you know. That's not pretense. That's real. If you're kidding around then...get out of here. Get out of this. We have enough liabilities.”

“Hey,” Ryo says. “We can think it's stupid and still do it. We don't have to be _you_ guys, making everybody sick with your optimism.”

“If you think it's stupid,” Kame says. “Why do it?”

“Sometimes,” Ryo says. “You just give up fighting. You start something because it seems like a good idea – and by the time you realise that it isn't, well. It's too late. I've nothing to go back to, man. I can't keep coming back, coming back. They'll just shoot me. Might as well take control of my fate now that I'm here.”

“You have Ami,” Jin says. “I'll bail if you bail.”

Ryo laughs. “Ami's engaged,” he says. “She's a piece of home. My little scratch of the flag. She's what keeps me going but she's not real. You want something that's real – Ami's not it. You have a woman, I...don't. I don't have anything.”

Kame is silent for some time. “You know,” he says, eventually. “I think you guys are a bad influence. I think if I hung around with you for long enough, I'd start wanting to be a traitor, too. I'd starting turning tail.”

“It's not like that,” Jin says, weirdly stung. “I'm not. I'm not a traitor. I don't want to be that person.”

“What person do you want to be?” Ryo says. “Or don't you care? Me, I'm happy to be the hero if that's what they need. I can do that.”

“Worked so well last time,” Kame says. 

“Yeah, well,” Ryo says. “Second time lucky. Don't the good guys deserve second chances, anymore?”

“I heard a guy got nine,” Jin says. “Chances.”

“A real cat,” Ryo says. “Nine lives, just like that. If I get to that point – shoot me. Put me out of my misery.”

“I'll do it,” Kame says. “I wash the flags here. You know that I do laundry? It's because I'm young – I'm the kid, I don't care. I'll play that guy if that's what they need. I keep the flags clean. I keep the colours strong. And you're faded – if you fade out, I'll wash you right out. I'll keep everything clean if I have to. I'm not a kid, I'm not your friend and I don't want your colours on me.”

“Fine,” Ryo says. “I just hope you'll die a hero and not a washerwoman.”

 

It's easy in moments to feel that this isn't forever. That you're in school or at home with your brothers and the world is just opening up. The fresh joys of sex, the whispered conversation and swapping of tips – the talk of women back home. The boasts and the bravado and the raised eyebrows, the clapping of backs. In moments like that it's easy to get lost. Easy to imagine that soon enough, you'll be going home. 

When their superiors talk to them, remembrance is like a hard quick fall. Weeks later, they're summoned to their leader. 

“This isn't just about pride in your country,” Admiral Ugaki says. “Or about honouring your families. It isn't even about securing a future for your children. It isn't even about our Emperor. It isn't even about God. It's about having a chance, a precious _chance_ , to be the kind of man that you read about in books. The kind of man your mother told you about when you were a boy. The kind of man who has always been inside of you and who – at this rare opportunity – can finally flourish. Many boys would kill for the chance that has been offered to you. Many men in history have faced this challenge and in overcoming it, have become greatness. Have achieved almightiness. Those who stand together will rain down together like thousands of arrows. This is about honouring _yourselves_.”

Standing like this makes Jin's thighs itch. It's the fabric of his trousers, starchy and scratchy. He's starting to wonder what Kame's putting in the water. It's not difficult to drift off during these meetings – he hasn't heard a new spin on this mission since he joined the war effort. It gets harder every day to convince him that there's any rightness left in this thing they're doing. That there's any point. Sometimes he looks at the planes and he thinks about Emiko and, well. There's no comparison. None whatsoever.

“You're all keen to put your abilities into practice,” Ugaki goes on. “To know which arena you'll be dominating.”

Jin doesn't dare catch Ryo's eye. It isn't funny, not really, but it's somewhat like being the two lone atheists in a church. Looking around, Kame's eyes are so solidly placed on Ugaki's jacket, his _medals_ , that it takes him back to nine year old Emiko and a field of flowers. Only that was a different kind of respect, of reverence.

“As you all know,” Ugaki says. “The end of this war is coming. We all sense it. Some will tell you that the bitter taste of defeat is on our tongues – they are wrong. Only somebody who turns their back on our country would say such a thing. Only somebody so devoid of patriotism – so devoid of _heart_ would dare utter the words under the sky, under our gods. We can turn the world around. We can turn the wind around. We have before and we will again. Is that understood?”

A murmur of agreement passes around, clipped and hard full of feeling. 

“The battle for Okinawa is beginning,” Ugaki says. “This is one of our last strongholds. We cannot let the enemy take Okinawa. We _cannot_. Your role will be to rid Okinawa of foreign vermin. Will be to sweat them out. We will pour poison over their ships, we will tear their conniving hearts apart. That will be your role. To protect Japanese land, to spill our blood into the soil so that the trees may grow free in years to come.”

There is a long silence. Jin looks around the room, from face to face to face. The colour isn't draining, the way he feels it in his face. The men look more and more soporific with each passing second. The feelings sinking in – the blood rising. The breath comes and goes. Jin wants to scream but there's nothing in his throat to push it forward.

“You will rain down on the American ships,” Ugaki says. “And you will sink them down, down, down until the waters are pure. That is your task. That is your mission. Your day is coming. Your day of glory – your lifetime of godliness.”

They're all given paper slips and pens. They're asked to mark their paper with a cross or a circle to indicate their willingness to accept the mission. Jin doesn't look at Ryo as he scrawls down his mark. They hand over their papers and the waiting begins. Jin looks around the room and tries to work out who might have crossed their papers. Whether any of the people around him could be traitors. They're kept together on purpose – guilt and peer pressure are both good motivators. Surrounded by the comfort of comrades, who would expose himself as a coward?

“Congratulations,” Admiral Ugaki says, folding the papers into his pocket. “I have before me a room full of gods.”

 

“Shit,” Ryo says, afterwards. They stand in the hangers watching the spring rain come down. “I can't believe it. I crossed my paper.”

“Me too,” Jin says, dully. “I don't think I'm even surprised.”

Ryo says nothing, just stares out at the airfields.

“I never liked Okinawa,” Jin says. “Went there once, with Emiko. It rained the whole time.”

“Hey, man,” Ryo says. “You don't owe Okinawa anything, if it can't just give you a little sunshine. Right?”

“Right,” Jin says, awkwardly.

They stand in silence for a long time, until night falls from the sky in little black pellets on the tarmac. 

 

Lying in bed, Jin wonders about this thing called honour. About the shape of it, the taste of it. Whether it can really be found in the back of the throat in that moment. Bearing down upon an enemy ship, whether honour is in the back of the mouth as the rat-a-tat starts and the heart beats and everything becomes a swirling mass of chaos. A cycle taking you down through the sea to the centre of the earth. Darkness. Whether honour can be found there. Whether _anything_ can be found there.

_Emiko_ , he writes, paper against his knees. _I had a dream about you this morning. You were spread out on top of me like the sunrise and I was touching you. And when you smiled you parted the waves, the way the sun does. When I fly over the water and I see the sun on the sea I think of your smile and the way it could turn the waves in a different direction. I miss you. Please write back._

 

 

The next day, it's Ryo's turn to be made example of. The beatings have decreased over their time here – leaders slowly recognising that instilling combative spirit isn't done by physical attack. The anger of some of those who were beaten has taught everybody a lesson. Earlier in the year, a man they all know as Kiyoshi (said in a hiss of breath) turned on his own pilots. Shot their planes out of the sky instead of following them into the bowels of the enemy ships. They later found his diaries – scrawls and scrawls of humiliation on every page. The leaders said he'd gone to hell. As if it were okay for the leaders to sentence the men to die, but not Kiyoshi. As if it made them any less dead. 

The beatings continue, fewer each month. Each one is a shock to the system, a break in the status quo. Everybody is subservient the first few days afterwards. Everybody checks themselves, brings their thoughts into line. Fear is powerful, potent. Being unable to express doubt and concern makes people believe that they have none. 

They know Ryo crossed his paper, no lesson learnt from his first retreat.

Ryo's face looks like hell afterwards. The scene is ugly as it pans out: Ryo in the centre of the room, the medaled jackets around. The chant is solid and slow, with a fervor like Buddhism. Like sex. There are no peaks and troughs, only the persistence of voices. Hard as Emiko's stare. 

“Are you going to turn back,” they ask. “Turn back, turn back, turn back.”

And Ryo can only promise not to and hope to be believed. 

As if a bloody nose and two black eyes and one slackened jaw can change a man's mind.

 

 

Slowly, the kids he played with dropped off, found other places to be. Jin wasn't sure exactly how it happened or why – by then he was more interested in Emiko. Sometimes she would turn up in the same field, sometimes she wouldn't. No pattern to it. When she arrived, they greeted each other with silent nods. They would stand and look at the falling sun for a while, Jin working up the courage to say something. Emiko never did. 

Once, she turned up crying. He'd never seen a girl cry – never seen anybody cry. The shock rattled him to his bones. He'd swallowed, scrunched his hands in his pockets and stumbled over, awkward and unsure. 

“Uh,” he'd said. 

She'd rubbed her face with her sleeve and pointedly, angrily, ignored him. “What do you want to throw today,” she'd said. 

“Um,” he'd said. “I thought, uh. We could walk to the bay. Throw stones. You know how to make circles in the water?”

“No,” she'd said. “I'll watch.”

“Okay,” he'd said. They'd taken the path down to the bay, some fifteen minutes away. Feeling like adults as they passed by old men and new cars, Jin had struggled for the right thing to say. Emiko had stopped crying as they'd passed through the town but her face was red and blotchy. He'd never seen a face like that.

“How come you don't go to school?”

He was pretty sure that wasn't the right thing to say.

“My dad doesn't believe in it,” she'd said, matter-of-factly. “Girls don't go to school. My mother didn't and I don't, either.”

“Oh,” Jin had said. “My dad says the same thing.”

“Oh yeah?” she'd said. “What do you think?”

Jin had thought about the girls in his class. They were quiet and studious but didn't seem to contribute much. He hadn't spoken to either of them for long enough to form an opinion. But Emiko's stare demanded a better answer than that. 

He shrugged. “I think the girls in my class are alright,” he'd said. “The boys are more talkative. They know more of the answers.”

“They're just more vocal,” Emiko had said. “Boys always are. You're taught that way. Girls are taught to be quiet.”

“My mother died when I was young,” he'd said. “I don't remember if she was cleverer than my dad.”

“I don't think that girls are cleverer, exactly,” she'd said. “Just that they deserve as much of a chance. It makes me really mad that I can't go to school.”

“You seem pretty smart,” he'd said. “I guess.”

“I am,” she'd said. “My brothers teach me what they learn. I use their books and I sometimes do their homework. They're pretty stupid but I do a lot better. I wish I had the chance.”

“Yeah,” Jin had said. “Maybe you could go to my school. Dress up as one of the girls. Tell your dad you're going to Sunday school.”

“You're not religious, are you?” she'd said. “I think this country has enough stupid passion.”

“Enough passion?”

“People do things here without thinking them through. Religion is...just another reason for people to believe in something that can't be proven. It's dangerous. Don't you think?”

“I believe in tons of stuff that hasn't been proven,” he'd said. “Like stars. Like...I want to be an astronaut. I want to go into space. It hasn't been done yet but I believe when I'm older, I'll do it.”

“That's different,” she'd said. They had reached the bay and she'd rolled up her trousers. Her ankles were slight and delicate, not like his own. He'd stared at them and missed what she'd said.

“What?”

“It's different,” she'd said, patiently. “That's science. Science is progressing. It's pretty easy to see that eventually we'll be able to go into space. I don't know how, but science will get there. Religion has no scientific basis. It has no proof and never will. It doesn't progress. It just grows more and more out of control.”

“Oh,” he'd said. “I guess so.”

“What do you like about space?”

“That nobody else has been there,” he'd said. “I want to name my own star.”

“What will you name it?” she'd asked. “After your mother?”

He'd screwed up his face. “Maybe,” he'd said. “I don't really remember her.”

She'd watched him cup a stone in his hand and turn to the water, scrutinising. He'd done this a hundred times with the boys and never felt this pressure to perform. His hand had shaken and he'd tried hard to still it. 

“Don't stare,” he'd said, not looking at her.

“How else do I learn?” she'd asked. It had been a fair point.

He'd tossed the stone into the water. It had bottomed out and leapt in soft arches across the water. Each landing had spread water in pretty circles. He smiled, pleased.

“See,” he'd said. “That's how you do it.”

“Okay,” she'd said. “Do it again.”

 

 

_Jin_ , Emiko's letter reads.

_The day I married you, I married a man. Not a country. Not a principle. A man who I love for himself._

_Mother is antsy this morning. She swears that the world feels as though it's creeping towards a cliff-edge. Do you feel like that, too? An edge, or a sudden drop – as if something is about to change. It's difficult to indulge her feelings. She feels this way a lot and let's face it, Japan has been on the edge of something for a long time. It could have happened any day before now._

_It's hard just to sit here. We stitch, us women. A thousand stitches made by a thousand women. One headband, wrapped around the head of one of you honourable boys. That's how it started. Only many of the women who started have lost the men they were stitching for and now can't hold a needle to save their lives. That Ryo of yours, who chickened out. Some of us women are chickens, too._

_So now, it's more like a thousand stitches made by a hundred women. Isn't that just the war summed up?_

_I shouldn't complain – it's easy work and the repetition is soothing. I just wish I were doing more. Knowing that you men are holding the future of this country in your hands and the women are merely stitching your headbands, it's hard._

_You signed up for this mission with the hope of saving your country. Perhaps you've lost yourself. As a woman I have resigned myself to being at the mercy of your decision but if you came home – I would not be sorry for it. Know that if you came home their traitor, you'd still be my hero._

_Emiko._

 

Going out flying helps. Flying has always cleared his head. He and Ryo practice in the night when there's less chance of being targeted. They don't fly far but it helps to leave their world behind. Looking out, it makes Jin think about the boys in their coloured jumpers dancing before the sun. Makes him think of his brother, crouched to the wind and running at him, crying out engine noise. He and Ryo flying their planes alongside the sun – he wonders how something so soothing could kill him. He wonders how he'll feel when he's flying this plane into the enemy and preparing for the last sensation he'll ever experience.

Ryo is an excellent flier. They both trained with passion and commitment, not knowing what lay in wait for them. Ryo's flying ability is what made his superiors so disgusted with him but Jin understands it. He's too talented to be a human missile. He thinks about the things the Americans are supposedly doing – their utilization of their resources. Nobody else uses human beings as bombs. It doesn't seem right for Ryo to die for his ability to turn a plane. Watching him out of the small window, it's like watching Emiko throw stones – his entire life has been about the deserving not receiving their just chances. 

When they land, Jin always sits for a moment, stroking his hands over the yoke. He blames it on the altitude but the truth is, landing again is like being immersed in treacle. The moment he touches down, he can feel the claws wrapping around his wheels, his wings. 

“Ryo,” he says, later, as they stand in the hanger. “What made you turn around? What was the concrete thought?”

Ryo tugs down his jacket and looks at him, slowly quirking on eyebrow. “Man,” he says. “I was trying to fly a plane. I don't know what one thought made me turn around. I wasn't exactly tracking them, you know?”

Jin looks at him and his eyes are so full of pleading, he sighs. 

“Alright,” he says. “I wanted more out of my life. I didn't want to die a god if I hadn't lived as a mortal. I found it hard to give up on my chance of life. I'm selfish, whatever. That's why I turned around. Kept thinking of Ami. That I'd never fought for her. I could've fought for her.”

“Why the hell did we join up?”

“Because that's what we were taught to do,” Ryo says. “Our fathers did and our brothers did and we can't refuse. Hell, your brother died for this war. And they trained us up to be great pilots. Who could resist that and the hard sell? Then you get here and it isn't the way you think it's gonna be.”

“I didn't think I'd have to die,” Jin says. “Isn't that stupid? I thought it'd all be over before it was our time. I thought I could be a hero by proxy. I thought being here would avenge my brother and somehow, I'd walk away free.”

“A living god,” Ryo chuckles. 

“I didn't realise until this morning that this is serious,” Jin continues. “That we really are going to die. I won't avenge my brother. I'll just be joining him. Adding to the numbers.”

“Hey,” Ryo says. “You have nine more lives, if you need them, remember.”

“I don't think I can do it,” Jin says. 

“Then turn around,” Ryo says. “By the time you've used up your nine lives, the war will be over. I guarantee it.”

“How many are you planning to use?” Jin says. 

“I've got eight more,” Ryo says, with a grin. “Be rude not to use them.”

“You should've fought for Ami,” Jin says. “When you get out of here, you should fight for her.”

“You got a letter from Emiko,” Ryo says. “You're all wet and girly.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “She's bored stupid stitching.”

“Can't say I blame her,” Ryo says. “They're good headbands but I bet she'd rather have her thighs around your head.”

“You're disgusting,” Jin says. “That's my wife you're talking about.”

Ryo just grins at him. “Hey,” he says. “I should be living vicariously through you now. Ami is...Ami. She's not reality, like I said. Time I gave it up. So it's your turn to provide the details. If you don't, I'll make them up. Deal?”

“Guess so,” Jin says. “She called you a chicken.”

“Smart girl,” Ryo says.

“Yeah,” Jin says. “She is.”

 

 

_Emiko._

_I'm losing my faith. Ryo and I keep talking about...well. You know what we keep talking about._

_This isn't flying. It's crashing. You said it and I didn't listen._

_The flowers are blooming, more and more each day. I think of cornflowers, of Okinawa rain. We're going to be defending Okinawa. I don't know when, or why. They're not giving us much to go on. I don't think you'd want me to defend Okinawa from anything – you'd say that it rained all the time when we were there. That's what Ryo said, too._

_I crossed my paper. It means no, it means...I won't do this. I'm being sent out anyway. Isn't that just the war summed up?_

_Somehow though it feels apt. It feels right to want to protect the place where we loved each other. Every inch of land is steeped in my love for you. I don't want to see it blown to bits._

_But I also don't want to die there. To live there, to love there and then to die there._

_Tell me what to do. Please, tell me what to do. I need you._

_Jin._

 

 

He was eighteen when it happened. He had taken time out of his training to get married and they had only been so for two weeks. It had been raining since the wedding day. Okinawa was known for its rain but still it had seemed ridiculous. They had occupied themselves in other ways. Every other day, he would go out and pick flowers for the room they were staying in. Emiko would watch him from the window, pulling his coat over his head in order to pick cornflowers. When she joined him, she went in as few clothes as possible.

“You'll freeze,” he'd said. 

“And if you get all your clothes wet, you'll have nothing to wear,” she'd returned.

“I don't intend to wear any clothes,” he'd pointed out.

“I married a pervert,” she'd said. Her hand had brushed over the tops of the flowers in the small fields, knocking dew down to the ground. She wasn't naturally graceful but when she took the time to be slow and thoughtful she had a kind of elegance. He loved to watch her amongst the flowers, turning her head over her shoulder and looking at him with her wide eyes. He'd felt like the luckiest man in the world. 

The rain had come down and soaked her to the skin. Her long hair dripped in a coil down the back of her skirt, underneath his hand on the small of her back. She'd turned around to face him, wet face and wet mouth and she'd kissed him with flowers falling out of her hands. And he'd wrapped his arms around her and felt the petals on his feet. 

“You married a pervert,” he'd said. “Was that what first attracted you to me? My rugged boyish charm?”

She'd laughed, picking up the stray flowers. Her feet had been filthy but she hadn't cared. She rarely paid attention to her own appearance. 

“No,” she'd said. “I don't know what first attracted me to you. You were a stubborn brat.”

“You were rude,” he'd said. “And bossy.”

“Still am,” she'd countered. “You're still stubborn.”

“And a brat?” he'd asked.

“No,” she'd said, after some consideration. “Worse – you're now a man. Twice as stubborn.”

“What first attracted me to you,” he'd said. “I think it was the way you looked at me. You held your gaze on mine. Not many girls I'd ever met did that. It showed me I had to take you seriously. Respect you. And your eyes – when I look at them now, it's like looking at flowers in the rain.”

“Oh, don't start,” she'd laughed. “You and your poetry.”

“I can't help it,” he'd said. “You make me poetic.”

“It's easy to make a man poetic,” she'd said. “Ever noticed that?”

“I wouldn't know,” he'd said. “But you – you'd make any man poetic. You don't know what you do to me. You just don't.”

 

 

They'd returned wet and kissing to the inn. The woman at the desk always looked surprised to see them, guests. It wasn't the year for it. It hadn't been for some time. 

“Akanishi-san,” she'd said, awkwardly. “I have a telegram for you. It's urgent.”

“Alright,” he'd said, taking it from her and holding it in his palm without looking at it. They had climbed the stairs with the information running down against his wet leg, with him none the wiser. Emiko had gone first, her legs shining white with coldness. And he'd held her hand and laughed, steps springing, hearing her laugh back. 

They'd thrown open the door and she'd begun wriggling out of her clothes, heaping them in a bundle on the wall. She'd turned to him, her collarbone wet and her eyes black with dew. Her nipples had been stiff with cold, goose pimples on her stomach.

He'd watched her as he'd taken the telegram out of his pocket. It had been hard to start reading with her standing naked in front of him. At least, it had been until he'd read the first sentence.

_Jin_ , it had read. _Reio has been killed in service. Come home._

_Father._

 

 

Ryo wakes him up the next morning. Jin can't remember the last time he went to sleep here – it hasn't done him any good. His back is in lumps where the mattress wasn't adequately supportive and his skin itches from the fabric. Grouchily, he pulls on his vest and rubs sleep out of his eyes.

“What's happening?” he says. 

“The guys reckon we've got a date for when we're going out,” Ryo says. 

“Shit,” he mutters. “When?”

“Tomorrow,” Ryo says. “Morning. We've got to spend today in silence. Reflecting. Our last day. That's all they've said. Haven't confirmed anything, but-”

Jin just looks at him, takes a deep breath. “This is it,” he says. 

“This is it,” Ryo says. 

“Is it raining?”

“No.”

“Then let's spend the day outside. Or in the hangers. Anywhere but here – I can't just sit here all day. I can't. They might be able to – it's easy for them to just be. I can't.”

“Okay,” Ryo says. 

They sit in the hangers, their feet extending into the dim sunlight. Jin argues that it'll give them the best view of any sudden attack, not that there's been any so far. The Americans seem more interested in fighting battles on the coasts than going into the air. That's why their leaders think an aerial attack will be so successful. Sink the ships, drown the enemy. They're all probably wishing for a divine wind. 

“Why did you decide to become a pilot?” Jin says, eventually, after a period of silence.

Ryo shifts about, getting comfortable, thinking. “It sounds stupid,” he says. “But I thought it'd convince Ami that I was the right guy. Like you, I don't think I thought I'd ever have to die. People have been saying for ages that the war's going to end. I guess I thought it'd come before now.”

“You thought it'd make Ami love you?”

“Ami loves heroes,” Ryo says. “The guy she's engaged to has a kinky hip – he can't do military service. He does a lot to help the war effort but he's not the kind of guy she wants. I figured if I came back a hero, she'd think it was worth telling him where to stick it. That she'd think I was worth taking a chance on.”

“That was your way of fighting for her.”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Jin says. “I don't think that's all that stupid. I mean – yeah, we've both been stupid, thinking that signing up for a death mission wouldn't involve actually dying. That was pretty stupid. But it's funny what you're prepared to do for somebody.”

“Did you sign up for this for Emiko?”

“No,” Jin says. “I always wanted to fly. Before the war started, even. And when it did and I signed up for flight training, she...didn't want me to do it.”

“Whoa,” Ryo says. Jin's not sure why he's surprised, so he doesn't comment. 

“She sounds like Ami,” Ryo continues. “Forthright. I've heard that the Americans think our women are passive – I'd like to them those guys try their luck with our two.”

Jin shrugs. “I think anybody can be passive if the force is strong enough,” he says. “I don't want the Americans to take this country. For all I'm scared of what I'm about to do, I can't bear the idea of this country falling to another. Of Emiko having to live under occupation.”

“She might have to, anyway,” Ryo says. “Who's to say that we're gonna win? Even if we do die.”

“I know,” Jin says. “I know. But there's that. This feeling of fear. I signed up for the tokkotai because of Reio. I signed up to die because of my dead brother. It doesn't even make sense when I say it aloud.”

“Shit,” Ryo says. “It doesn't, does it.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I couldn't stand it. Knowing that he'd died for something while I was messing around on my honeymoon. While I was running around in flower fields and screwing, he was...I couldn't do it. I couldn't bear it. He was just a kid.”

“Guilt,” Ryo says.

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Probably. I had to do something.”

“He didn't fly planes, did he?”

“No,” Jin says. “I was always the guy who liked planes. He was a soldier. He was sixteen – he wasn't ready. Didn't have the skills. They reckon it was quick, but...fuck.”

Ryo nods, slowly. They sit in silence for a while, letting the mood wash over them. It's hard to confront the death of close ones when their own is closer. Hard to acknowledge that the war is capable of killing anybody – of killing them. Jin hasn't made peace with it. They're encouraged to make peace with it and be positive, to make them better fliers, to make them go through with it. Jin wonders whether he'll carry bad energy with him to the next life if he doesn't make peace with it. His mother used to read him _The Tale of Genji_ as a boy. It was big on people taking demons to the grave.

“It's not going to end,” Ryo says. “The war. Before we do this. We could do it nine times and the war would still go on. Okinawa will take months. We don't have time.”

“I know,” Jin says. “We could run away.”

“We'd be shot before we got too far,” Ryo says. 

“I guess so,” Jin says. “I wish this was easy. I wish I were Hiroshi – I wish it all made sense to me. I wish I hadn't done this. That I could face this and not shudder.”

“Just concentrate on the flying,” Ryo says. “On the plane. You always feel calmer when you're in the sky. Just focus on that. Don't think about dying. Dying isn't contemplative, it's not reflective. It just is. That's how you accept it.”

“You haven't accepted it.”

“I've accepted it,” Ryo says. “I'm just not cool about it.”

“Do you think we'll take bad feelings on with us, if we're not at peace with it?”

“What, into the afterlife?”

“Yeah,” Jin says.

“I think the afterlife will be better than this,” Ryo says. “So if I take bad feeling into it, well, at least it can't be worse than having bad feeling here. Right? In the afterlife, Ami will fall in love with me and I'll get to work my bad mood out with sex.”

Jin chuckles. “Hey,” he says. “I have a present for you.”

“What?” Ryo says. “A parting gift?”

“Something like that,” Jin says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a folded dirty cigarette. Ryo looks at it as though it's made of gold or exemption papers and reaches for his lighter.

“You,” he says, lighting up. “Are the greatest man.”

Jin just laughs.

“No, seriously,” Ryo says. “You deserve a medal for that. Services to poor servicemen. How did you get it?”

“I bartered,” Jin says. “Wrote some poetry for a guy's wife.”

“Hah,” Ryo says. “I think that's called cheating, isn't it?”

Jin shrugs. “Emiko hates my poetry,” he says. “Might as well send it to somebody who appreciates it. It's not like she's gonna know her husband didn't write it.”

“Your poetry stinks,” Ryo says. “I'm surprised he was prepared to give up anything for it. Was he desperate?”

“Something like that,” Jin says. “Want to insult me more? I can take it back.”

“I'm good,” Ryo says, grinning. “Want a bit?”

Jin shakes his head, wrapping his arms around his knees. Smoking doesn't clear his head. Clouds do – but not now. Not today. Not tomorrow. It'll never be the same again. 

“I'm so scared,” he says.

Ryo just looks at him, takes a long drag on the cigarette. “Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

 

There hadn't been a proper funeral. The military wouldn't release the body and without it, the service couldn't take place. Instead, Jin's father had held a ceremony, a celebration of Reio's small contribution to life. It had been sombre and piecemeal due to financial restriction but not lacking in heart. Jin's father had cried for the first time in over a decade. Jin had been unable to. It hadn't sunk in yet.

They'd drank until the early hours, he and the other men. His father, uncles, friends. Everybody has become so drunk on Reio's memory that he had struggled to find his way back to Emiko in the end. The stories on his mind as he'd swaggered through the door and bashed his head against the light fixture. Emiko had pretended to be asleep – he'd been faintly aware of it. He'd thrown water down his back and over his face and collapsed into bed.

He'd tried to initiate sex, out of fury and out of pain and out of drunkenness. He'd turned Emiko over and looked at her in the dim light and she'd reached out and stroked his face. She hadn't been asleep.

“Don't,” he'd said. “I don't need-”

She'd understood the pain rolling down his head and his shoulders, pooling in his eyes. Like paint, viscose and trembling. She'd busied her hand but nothing had worked – he was too drunk. And he'd lidded his eyes and he'd chewed his lip until it bled, cursing himself.

“What if it never happens again,” he'd snapped. 

“It will,” she'd said, her voice factly in the darkness. “Of course it will.”

“He used to ride his bicycle through the village,” he'd said. “Ringing that bell for everything it was worth. My mother had died years before but my dad still made him ring that bell wherever he went. As if to taunt the gods: you can't take me away, I'm too loud, I'm too alive – nothing can take me down. Nothing can take me down.”

She'd stroked his shoulder and his face, saying nothing. Her body had been warm beneath his.

“How is he gone,” he'd stuttered. “How could they take something like that? A kid who'd just wanted to ride a bicycle through the town. A kid who just liked to make noise, to announce himself, to – how could they take a kid like that? He didn't want to die. He just wanted to be a man like my father. He just wanted to save his country. He didn't understand what he was doing. How do they get to take a kid like that?”

She'd lowered his face down onto her breastbone. And as he shook, she'd whispered things in his ear – poetic things and things that tipped the universe over and over. And he'd closed his eyes as the waves of her words had lapped at him, until he felt dizzy and still. And then he'd fallen asleep.

 

 

The next afternoon, they'd had tea. Many couples they knew still preserved the Sunday tradition of the tea ceremony. Emiko didn't like it – she felt trapped by it. Unable to express her feelings whilst she had to concentrate so much on her body. She'd sat on the futon in her thin robe with her hair down her back. He'd stood by the window, looking out at the sunlight in disbelief.

Her face had been round and her eyes had retained their way of holding a gaze. She was looking at him. She'd been looking solidly at him for over fifteen minutes. Her face showed no evidence of shock but her eyes were trying to understand. 

“I just,” he'd said, the flailing reasoning used by those without justification for their actions. “I can't sit around doing nothing. I can't watch Reio go out and-”

“Reio is gone,” she'd said, tilting tea to her mouth. “But that doesn't mean you have to-”

“Of course it does,” he'd snapped. “What else does it mean? What else can I do – you think it's okay for him to die for a cause and for me to scoff at that cause?”

“Dying yourself doesn't honour him,” she'd said. “If you don't believe in his cause then you'd be doing something you didn't believe in, making a mockery of what he stood for. He wouldn't want that.”

“It's not that I don't believe,” he'd said. “I believe in this country not being invaded by scum. I believe in preserving what's ours. I believe in freedom and dignity – everything Reio thought he was fighting for. It's that-”

“You don't believe in killing people to attain personal freedom,” she'd said. 

“Yes,” he'd said. “I don't believe that we can acquire our freedom by murdering people. It doesn't make sense to me. But if it's that or we let the Americans take us...”

Emiko had always sat, still and thoughtful and quiet when he talked about his dreams and ambitions. She had the generosity of a good, non-judgmental spirit and he appreciated it. He really did. But at the same time, once she had taken the time made up her mind, it was difficult to get her to alter it.

“You have too much talent,” she'd said, bluntly. “Reio had some combat training but it wasn't enough. He died because of incapability, not because of honour. You'd be a body – a number. You can't do this, Jin.”

“I'm not talking about being a soldier,” Jin had said. “I'm not talking about doing what Reio did. What he did _was_ brave. Was honourable. I'm talking about something bigger, something better. Look. The papers, the radio, it's been all over them. I could give myself to this cause. I could sink ships, I could be...I could be something. At the moment, I'm nothing. I'm just sitting here. I'm deadwood. Dead weight. I trained as a pilot and I'm not using it. They're only hiring pilots to do this – to sink ships.”

“You're talking about death,” she'd said, dully. “You're talking about becoming a human bomb.”

“Yes,” he'd said. 

She'd been silent for a long time, finishing her tea. Every swallow was tough, hard, angry. Outside, the sun had been setting, casting the main room into vaster and vaster darkness.

“There are so many things you could do instead that don't involve the certainty of you never coming home,” she'd said. 

“All I know how to do is fly,” he'd said. “I don't know how to shoot, or how to dodge. I'm no medic, I'm not a soldier. I can't sit here and do nothing but I can fly.”

“You wouldn't be flying,” she'd said. “You'd be crashing.”

He'd frowned, folding his arms. She was right but it wasn't the point. He understood her lack of comprehension – he was talking about a sort of honour that wasn't available to her. 

“Why do you want to do this?” she'd asked.

“I've never honoured you,” he'd said. “I would do it to-”

“I don't need you to honour me,” she'd said. “Any more than you already have by marrying me.”

“My brother-”

“You want to honour your family?”

“I want to be better than I am,” he'd said, weakly. “My father before me, my brother. I'm sitting around as the country burns and I can't do it anymore. How can you stand it?”

“It's not expected of me to interfere,” she'd said. “I don't want you to do this.”

“It'll be over before I'm sent out.”

“Then why go?”

“Emiko,” he'd said. “I can't sit here and let this happen. I have to do my part. I have to be better than I am. That may not have been what it was growing up but it's how it is now and I have a duty to fulfill. I understand that you're upset-”

“Don't treat me this way,” she'd said. “As though I'm incapable of reasoning. I'm perfectly calm. I'm not hysterical. I'm just not about to roll over and give in to you when you're talking like this.”

“You don't understand,” he'd said. “The pressure-”

“I do understand,” she'd said. “You think I don't wish I could be more than a seamstress? I've stitched headbands for these pilots. Miles of cloth that'll never see daylight again. Miles of cloth that young men died wearing because they believed it was their duty. How can you serve a country that wishes for your death?”

“It's not my death,” Jin had said. “That matters. It's the death of the country that matters.”

“And you're single-handedly going to stop that from happening?”

“Are you more important than this country?” he'd demanded.

She'd looked at him, hard and strong and terrifying. “Am I?” she'd asked. 

 

 

Emiko gets the letters one by one. There's a ritual to it that she keeps to. Slowly closing the door on the outside world and sitting down at her desk. Straightening her hair beneath her palms. Slicing open the envelope with a small worn letter-opener. Sliding out the paper inside with a caution never deployed on any other task. She opens the paper with shaking hands and reads each word aloud. Sometimes, she pauses. Sighs and moves on. 

It's the very picture of somebody reverent and true – she's seen her mother give her brother's letters the same respect. Only she doesn't feel faithful. Or loving. Or anything befitting of her role. She reads the words and the distance rings true. The hollow heartbeat of miles and miles of time and space between each line of beautiful, crafted text. All she can think about when she reads Jin's letters is that each might be his last. It's so hard to write back when she knows that she may never receive another word. 

She'd feel as though she'd caused it, by writing back. By loving too much. By saying too much.

She feels angry. Angry and sad and weary of the world. How nice it would be to go somewhere else and be somebody else – only everywhere in the world is being torn apart. There's no place that could welcome her. Instead of a dignified resignation she feels a tumbling sense of absolute rage. Sometimes, she worries it comes across in her letters. Only sometimes, because Jin never seems to care what she writes, just that she does. She opens the drawer full of unsent letters and places his latest among them. Steeling her hands on the desk she takes a few more deep breaths and then, slowly, she rises to her feet.

Moving over to the window, she looks out into the street. Hardly anybody goes out nowadays, not when the sun is bright and the sky is clear. It's spring-time – the most beautiful time on the calendar and yet all anybody can think about is the occupation. Most countries would welcome the nearing end of a war (if, indeed, her father is right about that) but here, it's different. The end means defeat, means retreat, means giving in. The men who stand around drinking, too old or frail or hurt to offer their services, their grim smiles tell many tales. The dead sons and husbands and kids, they tell tales, too. 

For all that the government talk of victory and everlasting peace – for all that they call the soldiers _gods_ , Emiko knows that the world is going to change. That soon, all of them will have to face the inevitable. That one more soldier, one more god doesn't make the slightest bit of difference.

She doesn't say as much to Jin. It's best not to. Even he wouldn't enjoy that sort of letter.

She stitches on afternoons like this one. She and her mother Naoko do, listening to the sounds of rocketry far away. Like living on a planet and hearing the stars crash into one another. Her father says that when they're close enough to see lights, that's when they should run. Her father with the broken kneecaps, who couldn't run if he wanted to. 

“You've heard from Jin,” her mother says. 

“Yes,” she says. With every letter, a fragment of him reignites in her memory. Today, she's thinking about the curve of his neck. Those strong muscles, so tough you'd never think he could die. Strong muscles to carry the weight of a strong voice. A strong kiss. 

“How is he?”

“He's struggling,” she says. “With the weight of this assignment.”

“Only the youth seem to have that indulgence,” Naoko says. 

“It's not an indulgence,” she says. “I think it could be a truth. So many people have swallowed that truth in the past. Only now we're choking on it.”

“Your father swallowed that truth,” Naoko says. “You should be grateful for it – it guaranteed your security. You grew up in a world without war. The first war was fought miles away. Only now-”

“At some point,” Emiko says. “At some point, it'll stop. It has to. We can't keep doing this every decade or so. Can we? Nobody has that amount of money or people. Something will stop this.”

“You're hoping that it happens before he has to fly.”

“Yes,” Emiko says. “I'm going to tell him to keep turning back. The limit is nine times – that's what Kiko told me. After that they can shoot for you insubordination but until then...”

“Emiko,” Naoko chides. “You live in a dream world. I'm appalled that you would think-”

“That I want to protect him?”

“That you put yourself above the Emperor,” Naoko continues. “Above god. I didn't raise you to put yourself above people who know better. Above your country.”

“It's not myself I place above my country,” Emiko says. “It's him. You don't ever want to say that to Kenji? When you think about him out there, alone?”

Naoko folds her fabric into her lap and takes a long, hard breath. “Of course I do,” she says, a rush of air, as if the government are listening in and taking notes on her treachery. “Of course I want to save your brother from this. But that isn't the world I was born into.”

Emiko sighs. The world her mother was born into is the world she raised Emiko in – Naoko hasn't moved with the times. Barely aware of them moving at all. She doesn't believe that it's her right to interfere with the decisions made by men. Emiko has always believed it her right to offer her opinion, whether asked for or not. When she met Jin, she began to challenge him, didn't stop when he went into flight training, didn't stop when he decided to pull forward the wedding. Didn't stop when he decided to leave her and take up a position in the tokkotai.

The only thing is, none of her opinions seem to have done any good, had any effect, initiated any change. It's one thing to have the right to express an opinion but people taking it seriously, that seems to be the sticking point. 

She puts down her sewing and rises to her feet. Her mother tilts her head and watches her leave the room.

“Emiko,” she says, but her voice fades quickly.

 

_Jin_ , she writes. 

_Turn back. You don't have to do this. I don't know how it works – I don't understand the politics and the dangers. It's not my life in my hands but understand that your life means as much to me. I wouldn't make this decision carelessly._

_But come home. You don't want to do this and I don't want you to. If you have to turn back nine times, turn back nine times. Anything you have to do._

_Your country wants you to fight for freedom, but pay for it with your own. That isn't right. A better world is around the corner. I can feel it. I can taste it._

_Please, come home._

_Emiko._

_Emiko,_

_We're setting out for Okinawa this week. We're not sure when. I don't want to give you a date, just in case._

_I haven't heard from you. I think I have to do this. I don't know how to do otherwise. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Know that I love you – and that a better world is coming._

_Jin._

 

Jin doesn't sleep that night. Ryo doesn't, either – Jin can hear him shifting about in the bunk below. The other men sleep soundly but then they've spent the day in silence. The night bothers them less. 

He thinks of Emiko. He hasn't heard back from her – he hasn't heard what she thinks he should do. In his mind, everything is swirling. Two choices, both heavy and valid and bitter. Only one can win out. Brother versus wife, country versus heart. He wonders whether Reio's decision would have been different if he'd had a wife. If he'd had anybody. If their mother hadn't died. 

When the alarm sounds, they dress in silence.

“I've heard that it's bombed to fuck,” Ryo says, under his breath. “Okinawa. The Americans are tearing it apart.”

Jin just looks at him, unsure of what to say. Whether it makes any difference, then, sending the bombers out there. Whether one man and one heart can really have any impact at all.

“What are you thinking,” he says. “About-”

Ryo just shakes his head.

Jin doesn't check the post. Nobody does. Nobody thinks about anything but the morning ahead. That by the evening, there may be no night to follow. Just darkness of a different kind. He promises himself that by the time he's behind the yoke, by the time his hands are steady and his vision is full of blue sky, he'll know. He'll know.

The rituals make little impression on him. They are given trinkets that are supposed to honour and encourage them on their day of reckoning. He takes his ensign and his eyes pass over the stitched words on the cloth. Kame holds his as if he's never seen it before. Ryo barely looks. His eyes hurt to see. Jin wonders who he can send the pistol to – he doesn't want it. Doesn't know anybody who would. Everybody he knows is sick of killing machines. 

They drink sake and toast the day. On no sleep and no food and no rest and no calm it makes him feel sicker than ever. A poem is read as they drink, full of ridiculous patriotism. Jin thinks back to Emiko's words about religion. About the mindless following of passion and principles. About the danger in that. He wishes he'd been old enough in his nine years to see that she was right.

The others have letters from their families which they want to put in their cockpits. Medals are freely given away, baubles that might pass to children and grandchildren in loving memory of a person they never knew. A person they will see as a great and brave man who gave his life for his country and had no thoughts of his own. Emiko will run her hand over the smooth metal and never understand the raging beast in Jin's heart that cried out as he received it.

He doesn't have a prayer from Emiko. She isn't the type. He's considered taking her letters into the cockpit. Before he leaves, he leaves them in his suitcase under the bed. It doesn't feel right. She might want them, in years to come. As he walks out to the hanger he passes by the post, picks up the three brown envelopes that are his, postmarks from days and weeks ago. Stuffs them into his back pocket. He's about to open them when he arrives in the hanger, when the Admiral comes around with their senninbari.

“A thousand stitches by a thousand women,” he says. 

“I heard that numbers are dropping,” Jin says. It's quiet but not quiet enough.

“Not at all,” Ugaki says. “Whoever told you that is a liar. You should reject that sort of talk – you are on a higher plane. The numbers of women who want to stitch the headbands of heroes increases by the day.”

Jin closes his mouth and says nothing.

Before climbing into their planes, some of the pilots raise their hands to their mouths and press down on the flanks. Jin doesn't. He's never liked rituals, preferring to rely on skill than luck. He climbs in with heavy steps and the nausea starts to recede. Everything is familiar. He sits down and everything is starchy with the paper in his back pocket so he throws the envelopes down to the floor. Takes a deep breath and looks around him. The band is tight around his head and warm where he thinks Emiko's stitches might be. He looks to Ryo's plane, thinking that this will be the last time he ever sees it.

At the last minute, Ugaki comes around and throws blue bundles into the cockpits. He doesn't look at each man's face when he does this and nobody questions it. They reach their feet forward and the press on, regardless. Nobody thinks. Nobody challenges. Nobody does anything. 

As the plane pans out he glances to the floor and Emiko's writing glares back up at him amongst a bunch of fresh cornflowers. They are as blue as the sky, as clear as the wind, as soft as the trees. He wants to touch them, more than anything, to press them against his face and savour their life and their smell. He thinks of Okinawa's cornflower fields and Emiko's body turning through them. Of her dress pressed with bright blue and her wide eyes. How little readiness he has to leave it all behind.

As the engine starts up, he reaches down and strokes one sole petal. The pilots no longer wear gloves – financially pointless. The flower is timid under his touch and it shatters, falling under his feet. He understands that. They line up out of the hanger and onto the runway, the sky over their heads so blue and so clear. Jin closes his eyes as the world around him speeds up. His stomach drops as he lifts up, which hasn't ever happened before. He doesn't like it. 

The others are behind him and in front of him. In a minute or so they clear the base and there's nothing around them but fields and sea. Out of the corner of his eye he watches the others toss their flowers overboard. He isn't tall enough to look over the side to see cornflowers raining down to earth. He wishes he could. He hopes that Emiko will look outside and see them – see a blue rain over a wonderful world and have, for the briefest moment, a sense of hope.

He kisses the bundle and tosses it over the side of the plane.

 

 

All of Jin's training hasn't prepared him for it. In a strange way he expected to be unprepared, but not to this extent. All of the science swirls before his eyes – he knows the task he has to complete. Their targets are the giant US warships off the coast of Okinawa, the bases from which the Americans attack. They are to drop their bombs and then to slam their planes into the ships. They are not to blink. They are not to doubt. They are to spend their last second of life shouting something suitably honourable. 

It all makes sense, it just doesn't make _sense_.

They fly over fields and homes and life – life that would be lost without the war effort. Life that would be safe had there been no war at all. And when in the distance Jin sees the sea, nothing feels any clearer. He wishes he could see Ryo's plane. All around him is a swarm of bees, faceless insects he feels nothing for or with. This is a kind of serenity but not the one he needs. In the distance, huge iron beasts raise upwards. American ships, busy with activity. Busy with planning horror. Jin tries to imagine that without his interference, these men will kill his people. Maybe even Emiko.

They separate at this stage and he flies alone, low and quiet. They'll be spotted but it will be too late. He's able to skid along underneath the clouds until he can almost see the scattering faces of the US marines. Then the firing starts and the world becomes noisier and noisier. The gunfire seems to shake, the noise rattles. It isn't consistent. He turns this way and that to avoid the shots setting off the bomb but the vibrations only rattle his teeth. The plane waves from side to side, pregnant with cargo. And as he ducks and dives, he thinks about Emiko for the last time.

The last time before he left for base, her hair was long and her back was long, bowed over him. She had big red lips and her eyes were damp. She was beautiful to him. He'd only ever had one women before her and she'd been pretty and bashful and awkward. Emiko's gracelessness was confidently executed. She paid no attention to the grotesqueness of sex, to the slip and the slide, to the hawking grunt of bodies together. And in her way, it was beautiful. She gave her body for him. Her entire life, sacrificed to the whims and the pleasure of men. 

Her letter lies at his feet, recent and unopened, probably with her decision inside. He'd asked for her opinion and he's sure she'll have given it, succinctly so. Just a shame he didn't receive it until it was too late. He reaches for it and stuffs it into his shirt. He makes no move to read it. A part of him knows that it's too late.

They had lain afterwards, breathing hard. She'd held her hand against her stomach. Suddenly, a part of him understands. What he wants, the life he wants – the life he can't give up on. He feels a little like Ryo said – the sudden recognition that he isn't ready to give up on life. Isn't ready to give up on the chance of it. Of living in peace and raising children, of watching them run around in the paddy fields like little fireflies. Of having girls and educating them. Of watching Emiko break the cycle of daughters in her family, the way only Emiko could. Of watching her grow round and happy and older and older.

The right wing lowers hard and sudden, the jerk rising up through his neck. No time to consider the pain, he looks to the side and the shot is a clear-through, so quick the smoke rises with shock. Emiko's words close to his heart. The gunfire beneath. The ship looms below, belly-black and full of smoke. Around him, his peers give their lives. If he could look over the side, he'd see their outstretched faces, full of patriotism and full of fear.

He can't see Ryo.

“I can't do this,” he says, to Ryo. For Emiko. For Reio. For himself. “Fuck, I can't-”

Taking a huge breath, he pulls and yanks at the yoke. Slowly, the plane begins to turn around. There's only enough fuel for one journey and he knows it, he knows that he could beaten or even killed if he's captured – but better then. Better to have a chance than to be certain. Always better to hope than to know. All of the training hasn't prepared him for death but instead given him a passion for life. He flies away and the sky opens up and nothing has ever looked so beautiful. The sun beats down on his face and he sees the mountain ahead, the mountain they're supposed to salute a goodbye to. A hello feels so much better.

He flies until the sound of gunfire is a tickle. The plane bobs, unsteady and sickly, and he prays. Prays for the fuel to hold, prays for the plane to stay afloat. He starts to wonder whether the gods wants him to succeed – whether that's why he's been able to escape. He's never really believed, not until now. He believed in things he could see. In Emiko, in love, in his brother. Never anything higher than that. There _was_ nothing higher than that.

In the distance, he can see land. The plane's engine ticks over, slower and slower each time. The yoke is shaking in his hands. Swallowing, he checks the gauge, one hand over his heart. He's still breathing hard. His heart is racing. His mind is full of Emiko's face and he wants to cry out to her. He wishes he could tell her what he's done. All of the moments of muddy thought and the terrible fears in the night, all leading up to this decision. Desertion feels so much better than submission. Maybe that's how she felt, too, rejecting the ideas of the women around her. She would understand this moment. 

As land approaches, green and full and beautiful in the sunlight, the plane begins to slide downwards. Jin feels himself rising in his seat, hoping against hope, trying to pull the plane back upwards. His heart is full of feeling and he tries to push it out, just in case, just in case. Get rid of what you have to get rid of. Unnecessary weight must go. Only nothing works and the plane continues to fall. The wing has stopped smoking but the metal is tearing away with the wind, now against him. Maybe the gods aren't so keen, after all. He should've known better than to bring the gods into it. Than to place Emiko above them, above the Emperor. 

“Shit,” he says, beginning to panic. Ryo never told him about this. How did Ryo get back? Sheer hope alone? He pulls up on the yoke but nothing helps – the air shooting through the wing drags him downwards. There's not enough force under the left wing to keep him upright. Before him, land is sweeping and hard-edged and he knows that if he hits it, he won't see it again. Won't see anything again. In desperation, he yanks on the yoke, again and again and again.

“Please,” he says. “Please, please, please, _please_ -”

When the curve of the cliff-face approaches, he closes his eyes. The world creeping closer to a cliff-edge. His life creeping closer. Only he isn't about to fall. He's about to crash. Everything goes dark and he drops his hands. The whole world is dark rock. The nose of the plane doesn't touch stars but it still splinters and the world goes as black as space.

 

 

Emiko sits in the middle of the futon, where she's been for days. Jin's letter spills out onto the sheets, its characters a mess. She sits with her hair and her robe hanging loose and tears in her eyes, her mouth open. Her mother stands in the doorway and doesn't correct her on her total lack of dignity. 

Okinawa. And the postmark, a week ago. Late. He could've flown by now. He could've been dead a week and she had no idea. Before today, people would have told her that if Jin died she would know. Now that he might be, they'll coo at her. “You couldn't have known,” they'll say. She couldn't have known. People often say that when your lover dies, you know – she didn't know. That hurts, almost more than the realisation. Almost more than the loss.

“The latest is that planes have been out to Okinawa all week and this week, too,” her mother says. “So Kiko says. Some bad conditions, too, so it's impossible to know when...”

Every other day there have been a wave of planes crossing the island but she never made the connection with Okinawa. Every plane that passes could be Jin, she has always understood that. He told her not to watch every one. He's always told her not to assume things like that. That she would only go mad, putting her heart into every plane that crossed the sky. He told her he would tell her when he received his mission. So that she could say goodbye. 

She wishes she had been able to say goodbye – or that she knew she still has time to. She wishes she knew for certain. She wants to catch a last glimpse, to give her some memory to hang onto. She wishes that when she'd seen the blue flowers raining down to earth, she'd known what it all meant. 

She wonders whether her letter to him arrived before he flew out, or whether he could be reading it now. Whether he could be alive, having deserted them after all. Whether in no time, he'll turn up at the door and if so – what they'll do then. 

She hasn't eaten for days. 

In her mind, she drafts letters. Considers sending them, just in case. 

 

_Jin,_

_If you're still alive, let me know where you go and I will come and find you. If I have to walk there, I will. Just send a postcard with the word on. Nothing else. I don't need anything else._

_Please, be alive. And be well._

_And if not and this letter has nowhere to go – know that I love you, despite your stupid decisions and your misplaced sense of honour. I will always love you._

_Emiko._

 

 

“You have to eat,” her mother says. 

“I will when I know,” she says. “One way or the other.”

“You won't know,” her mother says. “This is war, you must understand. They won't chase ghosts for you. You must understand that Jin has sacrificed himself for a greater cause. He has put aside his heart and you must do the same. To give his memory the dignity he has given your legacy.”

“What if he deserted them? I told him to turn back-”

“No,” her mother says. “No man would turn back because a woman told him to. You don't understand how they train them. He wouldn't dishonour you that way. You must eat.”

“I understand Jin,” she says. “Mother, I understand _him_.”

“Emiko,” her mother says. “It's time to let go.”

“I'll write to the Admiral,” Emiko says, as if she hasn't heard. “Ask him if Jin flew out. When. If he hasn't, yet – I'll ask-”

“They won't tell you anything,” her mother says. “Emiko. It could be intercepted, anything. This is _war_. Do you understand that?”

“No,” Emiko says. “I don't understand war. I don't understand why a man would choose death. Why a man would willingly go out to die without fighting first. Crashing into a ship isn't fighting. It isn't anything. How many arrows do they need? They'll never have enough arrows. Those shields are stronger than our planes and what those men do is senseless. It's barbaric. It makes no sense.”

“War isn't logical,” her mother says. “You look at things too literally.”

“Better than not enough,” she says. “I'm going to write to them.”

“As long as you eat,” her mother says. “And get up, and go back to your stitching. You can write to who you like. Let us pick you up. You must move forward. It isn't dignified-”

“Nothing is dignified,” Emiko says, but she rises to her feet. “Nothing we've done for five years is dignified. Why start now?”

\---

When he opens his eyes, he expects to see a twisted wreck of charred metal and flesh. His imprint on a cliff-face. Only when he opens his eyes, the sky is bright and burning hot. He has to close them again, just as fast. His other senses start to kick in. He doesn't feel pain, which doesn't make sense. When he extends his arms and legs, nothing aches, not even his back from sleeping poorly. That seems to settle it. He must be dead. The heat means that he's in hell and-

When he opens his eyes, there is nothing. Nothing except the bright blue sky and the pale white ground. No clouds, no buildings, no trees. No people. If this is hell, it's disappointing. He looks around and the plane is a ruin behind him. Only the barest framework remains. Half of it is underground, burrowed so deep into the earth he'd never get it out again if he wanted to fly away from this place. Wherever this is. 

He can stand. He can turn in circles and nothing hurts. And yet the plane is in pieces. Dark and thick and black in the earth, like a tree struck by lightning. When he looks up, the world is bright and cool. This can't be hell. Everything smells fresh and clear and clean. It can't be heaven, either – there are no pearly gates. No tests, nobody else around. And yet it isn't Japan. It isn't America. It isn't anywhere Jin might recognise. He takes a cautious step and then another. The ground supports him. He looks down at his feet, which are unharmed. His clothes aren't torn. There isn't a scratch on him.

He could still be dead.

He walks in one direction for two minutes then turns, retraces his steps back to the starting point. Leaning into the cockpit of the plane, he finds that his radio is broken and his compass smashed. No information. He wishes there were something to break up the landscape. Something other than plane-carcass. He walks in the opposite direction, always checking over his shoulder for the plane behind him. No matter how far he walks, the white ground extends. It is ever-lasting, like one of the paddy fields near his home. He wants to feel panicked or stricken or upset but he feels none of these things. Only numb and lost. Lonely. 

He's used to things not making much sense. Used to dealing with bizarre situations in front of him. Ryo's beating, sermons about the honour of suicide, flying a plane with a stomach full of sake and hundreds of insects crawling beneath him. Under the plane, under his skin. Itchy blood. Itchy mind.

He wonders if he'll see Ryo here. 

“Hello?” he asks, to nobody in particular. No echo. Barely any sound. The voice seems to disappear into the vast wilderness.

“Fuck,” he says. “Emiko?”

Emiko would know what to do with this. She always knew what to do with things, even if it meant watching somebody else put her theories to the test. She didn't accept the strangeness around her, she challenged it as much as she was able to. Even if it meant not getting the credit for her thoughts, that never stopped her having them. Jin finally understands the importance of women – the ongoing struggle to get their voices heard when the world wants to snub them out. The urge to keep shouting in a vacuum. All those men who went along with what they were told to do and all the women who screamed out against it. He wonders whether things would be different if all the politicians, soldiers and pilots in the world were women. 

It doesn't do any good to think of Emiko. A part of gut twists when he does, at the sudden recognition that he might never see her again. That in deserting the war for her he may be about to die all the same. Putting it out of his mind, he turns back around and tries to take in the panorama, the vast scape of nothingness. All he can see for miles and miles is white ground and blue sky. The plane can be a starting point, he decides. If he walks for long enough, he'll find something. It's not possible for the land to go on forever – Japan isn't big enough for that sort of dream. Nowhere is big enough. He's confident that if he has perseverance, he'll find something. It's better, after all, than still being in the middle of the conflict.

And his heart, full of feeling and love and relief, will lead him back to Emiko. It has to. That's what he has to believe in now. He takes a long step and then another, and another, and another. And all the while, his mind starts to clear of feelings, of memories, of everything.

 

 

The plane vanishes into the distance. As Jin walks, he finds himself less and less able to stop walking. It becomes a pattern, like a heartbeat, like breathing. If he stopped, he'd just collapse. As he walks, the images in his mind seem to fade, as if sucked into the air. The thoughts of Emiko become less and less clear with each step. She has large eyes and a forceful way of holding her mouth but somehow, he can't picture exactly how the two go together. The exact arrangement of her face which only yesterday was as clear as day. That can't be good, he doesn't think.

As he walks, he writes a letter aloud. The only way to keep her alive. The only way to keep his mind focused on what's important. On the goal. 

“Emiko,” he says. “I decided. I don't know what you advised me to do but I decided. I want to see you again. I want to breathe. To touch the sand and the sea and the wind. To walk in flower fields. To taste things – food, you, life. 

I once asked you if any man could give up life, could give up all he knows for a cause he doesn't truly understand. I once asked you if _you_ could. Because all my life, I've seen you like a man. You act like a man. With your guts and your forthright attitude. Please don't be offended by that. I love you because you're a woman, because you're everything that I need in life. Fresh and beautiful and soft. And like the morning. Did I ever tell you how like the morning sunrise you are?

You hate poetry, though, don't you? So I'll go on. I'm now realising that you're not like a man at all. At least, if I'm a man. If all those men I flew with are men. We're all a bunch of cowards. Of sheep. We believed in something that doesn't exist. Some of us died for it. Some of us – some of us are lost for it. When I asked you if any man could give up life, I should've asked: could any woman? Would any woman?

You wouldn't. Women wouldn't. Would they? You've always known better. Is that because you're a woman or because you're _you_?

You'd say you had listened to the men in your life. That instead of going for your dreams you'd remained a seamstress. That we all suffer under occupation and that sometimes we don't have an exit. That sometimes, we can't escape. It isn't the right time. We don't have the skills or the voices.

I turned my plane around because I believe I found my voice. I wish I could give you that feeling, too. Maybe if I get out of here I'll help you. I will get out of here. I need to see you again, the way after a long night we all need the morning. 

You are the sunrise. This place has no sun and so I know, when I see the light of dawn on the horizon – that I am moving closer to you. I will find you. I promise, Emiko. You have seen a weak man all these years, a frightened man. A man scared by himself. And now, you shall see a strong man. A man who will trek miles to find you again. Please wait for me. 

Jin.”

 

 

He takes a deep breath, wanting to fold the words up in his heart so that he might come back to him. For as long as he talks and as deeply as he feels, the memories are fading, as if his eyes are failing. He can no longer picture Emiko in his mind. He must rely on what's inside of him. He must rely on his legs. He must keep going.

“Reio,” he says. “I wish I had seen the things I've seen earlier. I wish I could have told you all the things I know now. But tell me – if you have been here, walked this path, I need a sign. I need help. I need the words of wisdom I couldn't give you. I need you to be big brother now. Can you do that?”

Nothing. Not a whisper of breath on a wind.

He keeps walking. Nothing changes. The ground still as white, the sky still as blue. The world remains the same but for his mighty bootprints, continuing on into the vastness.

As he walks, he speaks aloud. Writes down the memories, as if hearing him speak them will make them stick. Will make them real. 

“When I first saw you, you were just a kid,” he says. “Knobbly knees and your stupid stare, I didn't like you at all. All my life I expected to marry some dainty thing who wouldn't speak very much. That's what women were. I like to think that my mother was different, but only because I met you. And understood that women could be different and that different was what I wanted. 

We grew up and we learnt from each other. Went down to the bay, climbed trees in the woods. We wanted to walk up mountains together. I wish we had – you knew the things I could never have known. What to pay attention to. What I was missing out on in life. And in return, you listened to me talk of things you couldn't know. I wish we had climbed mountains. When I think of all the things we might have taught each other.

You grew into something I couldn't understand. Tall and brazen and headstrong. Like me only bigger, bolder. My father didn't know what to make of it all. Still doesn't. But when he watches you he isn't afraid, he isn't unsettled – I think my mother might have been the same way. He knows how to understand you in a way that I don't. In a way I hoped I soon would. I wanted to grow to understand you. To trace you the way we would've traced a mountain. Some big discovery.

The day I told him I was going to marry you was the first day I'd seen him smile in so long. With Reio gone in a war he couldn't fight – it was a moment that made him forget. Forgetting is important in life, just as much as remembering. I'm only sorry it didn't last longer. That the day we shared couldn't have gone on forever. I remember you with the flowers in your hair and the stars in your eyes and any dreams I had, they appeared in you. Everything I owned and experienced, everything I'd ever felt became you. 

I felt like I'd waited my entire life for it and there you were. And yet when I look back, I asked for nothing like you. I asked for everything different. Maybe somebody knew better. Maybe some higher force understood better than I could have what was right for me.

With a meeker woman, I'd have been dead. Maybe I still will – maybe that's what awaits me at the end of this. But at least it'll be on my terms, not theirs. You taught me that. All through my life, you taught me that. I want to keep learning. Let's keep learning.”

 

 

“Jin,” the voice says. For a moment he thinks he's conjured it himself, just by reliving memories. The voice isn't instantly recognisable and so when he opens his eyes, he's shocked to see Reio standing there.

“Fuck,” he whispers. “Fuck, Reio. Is that – are you really here? Am I...I...fuck. I'd forgotten you. I'd forgotten that your face looked like-”

“Shut up,” Reio says. “Don't stop walking. I made that mistake.”

Unable to hug him, Jin just takes his hand, trying to breathe. “Mistake,” he repeats. “What mistake?”

“The ground draws you down if you stop,” Reio says. “You're not meant to stop.”

Jin just nods, nods until he can begin to process things. He isn't sure that Reio is really here – they say that in the desert, you see things you're desperate to see. And if Reio _is_ really here then Jin must be dead, and Emiko-

“Am I dead?” Jin asks.

“No,” Reio says. “I don't think so.”

“Then you're not dead, either?”

“I don't know,” Reio says. “I'm not too clear on this, any more than you are. I just know you're not meant to stop.”

“Why aren't you meant to stop?”

“Because,” Reio says. “You're looking for something. I've been looking for something, too. That's what I figure.”

“How long have you been walking here?”

“I don't know,” Reio says. “How long have I been dead?”

“Months,” Jin says. His voice starts to heave in his throat. “Fuck, Reio-”

“Okay,” Reio says. “Months, then. Keep going. You asked me to be big brother – keep moving.”

“I'm walking,” Jin says. “I just – it's been a long time. I've missed you. I never thought I'd see you again.”

“It doesn't feel like months,” Reio says. “Time moves differently here. Doesn't feel like two, three, four months. It could've been years.”

“I need to get back to Emiko,” Jin says. “Do you think she's here?”

“Is she dead?” Reio says.

“No,” Jin says. “No, she's – no. I don't think so.”

“What were you doing, before you got here? How did you get here?”

“I was flying,” Jin says. “Crashing. I took up with the tokkotai.”

“Fuck,” Reio says. “Because of me?”

“Maybe,” Jin says. “Grief. I don't know. It was a weird time. Things feel less complicated here.”

“The sky has no clouds,” Reio says. “That's why. Skies are like minds – lots of clouds, lots of thoughts. Clouds catch the thoughts. This sky is blank. Everything here is blank. It makes you blank, too, if you're not careful. You don't want to lose yourself here.”

“No,” Jin says. “I don't. I'm losing memories. I can feel things fading.”

“Keep them in your head,” Reio says. “What were you doing – crashing into a ship? We heard about the tokkotai. Everybody thought when Okinawa fell, they'd be needed.”

“I was flying towards Okinawa,” Jin says. “And I turned back. Just after a shot pierced the wing. I tried to fly back to land but crashed into the cliff-face.”

“Maybe we _are_ both dead,” Reio says. 

“I don't think this is the afterlife,” Jin says.

“Why not?” Reio says. “It could be.”

“Because you died a hero and I died a traitor. We wouldn't end up in the same place.”

“I guess so,” Reio says. “I can't believe you turned back.”

“I'm sorry,” Jin says.

“Don't be,” Reio says. “We were all wrong. Wars – they're all wrong. They're never what you think they are. They never do any good. I believed I was doing it for a good reason but when it happened, I barely had time to blink. I wasn't good enough to fight. And they let me go out there to get torn apart. I was just a body, a number. A human shield.”

“A human bomb,” Jin says.

“Yeah,” Reio says. “I hope they don't take us, though. The Americans.”

“I need to find Emiko,” Jin says. 

Reio says nothing. They keep walking and Reio doesn't let go of his hand. Jin feels the slightest tug with each step, something he didn't notice before. The sinking feeling. His legs aren't tired, which doesn't make sense. He wonders how much time has passed.

“Do you have anything belonging to her?” Reio says. “It might help. Keep the images alive. Whatever we're looking for, I've not found it. We could be here forever.”

“I left letters in the plane,” Jin says. “Fuck, I left- we can't go back, can we?”

“Fuck, no,” Reio says. “I'm not going back. You have to go forward. Things change when you go back. Moving in any direction, it saps your memories, saps your thoughts. If you go back again, something gets rewritten. It writes over the blank spaces. Makes you think things that weren't there. Don't go backwards.”

Jin feels down his clothes, feeling his stomach crumble. He can't believe it. He's sure he put it there and yet. Yet. It doesn't make sense. There has to be something-

“Reio,” he says. “I took out her letter and put it in my shirt. I put it there and it's gone.”

Reio looks at him. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Just before the crash.”

“Strange things happen here,” Reio says. “Okay. Tell me about her. It'll keep things alive.”

“You know her,” Jin says.

“I knew her,” Reio says. “Memory's fuzzy, remember? I don't remember what she looks like. Whether you married her. What the wedding was like, if you did. I don't...I can't recall. So tell me.”

“She used to play with us, in the fields,” Jin says. “She was a kid. A silly kid. She copied me, liked the way I did things. And she grew up and we kept feeding her books and our homework, because she'd do them. She'd do anything that involved learning and we were...”

“Deviants,” Reio says. “Little horrible children.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “We were lazy bastards. She didn't mind. She did all of our homework and her brothers', too. That's how we all ended up with good grades. I owe so much to her for that. Flight training needed good grades and I didn't care for anything back then _but_ flying.”

“She had a stare,” Reio says. “And really long hair. You used to pull it.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Still does. All three.”

“You married her?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “We were eighteen. You weren't at the wedding – you'd been drafted. We wrote to you and told you about it. I don't know if you got the letter. You were...we got the news you had died two weeks later. In Okinawa.”

“Letter was probably late,” Reio says. “Postal service isn't very patriotic in wartime. I never got your letter. I bet you didn't get mine until late. I think I could've been dead before the wedding.”

“I wish things had been different,” Jin says. “That the war never happened. That you could've seen the day. Everything was bright blue and she wore flowers in her hair. Father smiled.”

“He did, huh?”

“He did.”

“I wish things had been different, too,” Reio says. “Maybe they still will be. Let's keep walking and hope. It's all we can do.”

“Was there never a girl for you?” Jin asks, impishly. “Never any nurses, or- the war makes people look back at girls with kind eyes. My friend Ryo said that. Said love was reliant on circumstances.”

Reio just laughs. “Yeah, there was a girl,” he says. “There were always girls. Ryo was right.”

“Nobody serious?”

“No,” Reio says. “I didn't want to be serious. You were the one who wanted to settle down. I just wanted to explore my options a bit.”

“And did you?”

“Not as much as I wanted to,” Reio says. “Unfortunately. The war could've provided us with leave for that sort of thing. It would've improved morale no end.”

“I wish I hadn't left her.”

“You didn't leave her,” Reio says. “You wanted better for her. She'll understand that.”

Jin thinks about Emiko, where she is now, how old, how things are. Whether Japan lives under US occupation or whether things went their way after all. Whether he has time enough to change things. He realises now that his mistake is huge – to put his sick country above his healthy wife. To put anything above the love of his life. It's whether he'll get a chance to change it. To make good on it. 

“Does this thing ever end?” Jin says. “You walked in the same direction for two months?”

“And only caught up to you,” Reio says. “No, it never ends. I don't think.”

“Fuck,” Jin says. “I should've brought food.”

“You don't get hungry here,” Reio says. “Or thirsty.”

“Not at all?”

“Never,” Reio says. “You don't sleep. This isn't living. It isn't dying. It's something in-between. When I said I didn't know anything...neither will you. This isn't something we can know. We just have to keep going.”

 

They walk and walk and walk and slowly, the conversation filters out. The nuances of Reio's face become less and less familiar and when Jin tries to think of Emiko, there's a tug in his heart, a feeling behind the eyes, but nothing clear. It's hard to picture her. Hard to remember what her touch felt like. 

“Maybe we're not looking for anything,” Jin says, eventually. “Maybe that's just a lie. Like the war was a lie. Who told you we were looking for something?”

Reio shrugs. “I assumed,” he says. “That there had to be a point. I've made that mistake before, right?”

“Right,” Jin says. 

“When did you become a pessimist?”

“When Japan started shooting its own stars out of the sky,” Jin says.

“I think we're looking for something,” Reio says. “Or we wouldn't have found each other.”

Jin nods, because he can't refute that. He's not sure he wants to. And almost as soon as Reio says it, his eyes focus, become silver and hard. 

“Reio,” he says. “What's that?”

About ten feet away there is a sheet of paper. It doesn't blow in the breeze but it isn't fastened down. It just lies, like a ghost. Jin jogs up to it and bends down to touch it. The moment he does, the tugging sensation in his heels stops. Reio walks slowly up to him.

“We can stop walking,” Jin says. “We're not sinking anymore. We found it.”

“What is it?” Reio asks.

Jin looks. “It's a letter,” he says, picking it up. “Reio,” he says. “It's Emiko's letter. It's been opened. The one I put in my jacket – it's been opened and ended up here. How does that work?”

Reio isn't looking at Jin. He isn't looking at the letter. His eyes are hard on the white ground. Jin looks around him, the great horizon and then this one patch of ground. When he looks down in the direction of Reio's gaze he sees very clearly why his brother is staring.

In the ground is carved a word in red, as though they stand on a map of the world, as though you'd mark down a country or a pole. As though it's a location but without co-ordinates or directions or anything useful at all.

  
_Southend._  


“What does it mean?” Jin asks.

“I don't know,” Reio says.

Jin crouches down on his haunches and strokes over the word, thinking it carved in red dust. It doesn't shift when his fingertips brush it but seems to be imprinted into the world. Looking around him, Jin can't see anything else that would provide clues. All around is just endless nothingness. And Reio, with his furrowed brow and excitement in his eyes. 

Jin turns over the letter and looks at it. He can't find anything on it that would help. A part of him wants to believe that it's a message from Emiko. It would seem too convenient, too hopeful – but why otherwise would her letter appear here? Why else would it have been taken from his jacket? 

“I think we need to go south,” Reio says. “If we're to take it literally.”

“No other way to take it,” Jin says, starting to read the letter. It makes water rise in his throat, thick with emotion. He misses Emiko. Wished he'd listened to her in the first place. Wished he could now come home. 

“How do we go south?” Reio says. “We don't know which direction we've been walking in. We can't go backwards. You don't have a compass, do you?”

“No,” Jin says. “What about the stars? I could use the stars, Reio, I always-”

“There are no stars here,” Reio says. “Only sky. Blue sky. The weather never changes.”

That depresses Jin more than he knows what to do with. 

“Right,” he says. “Okay, we found this here for a reason. We walked in this direction and found this. Surely if we continue on, we must be going on the right track? If we'd been walking north, we'd never have found the letter or that marking. We must be going south.”

“Unless it's a test,” Reio says. “We shouldn't walk backwards, but it might be the only way out of here. It might be a challenge.”

Jin is quiet, for a moment. “Fuck, Emiko,” he says. “I wish you were here.”

“What does the letter say?”

“It says to turn back,” Jin says. “And come home. I asked her what I should do. Whether I should bail on the mission. She told me to come back nine times if I had to.”

“Then...” Reio says. “We have to turn back. That's why the letter is here. To tell us to turn back.”

“You said turning back meant that things get rewritten.”

“It does,” Reio says. “But I wouldn't say it if I weren't sure. I've been here longer. I know how this thing works.”

“So we risk it?”

“We risk it,” Reio says. “Come on. That's what we always did. We always risked it. It'll be alright. We're together. We were always together, right? We can do this.”

Jin stands and looks at him, feeling like a child again. He remembers running around in the dusk-light with Reio, playing catch, laughing until they cried. Plane engines in little voices.

“Okay,” he says. “Let's go.”


	2. Part Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written in 2008 and includes explicit sexual content and disturbing, supernatural content.

_March, 2008_

 

When the alarm goes off, Emiko is already awake. That's normal for people these days, to lie and worry about things that stop them from sleeping. To indulge fears greater than the monster under the bed that plagued them as a child. Nowadays there are so many monsters – so many worries. When she gets out of bed, the floor is cold under her feet but it doesn't shake her out of her concerns. 

She showers quickly and walks around the apartment as she towels off her hair. The rubbing is soothing and rhythmic. Once, twice, four dozen times. The apartment isn't big so it allows for pacing, useful for mornings like this. She lives on the rougher side of the city, where the rental prices are cheaper. It compromises on view and on quality neighbours, but it's one less thing to worry about when the bills come in. While she paces, she looks out at the tatty buildings, neglected and lovable. The small inches of sky pressed between them. Occasionally her apartment gets a slant of the sunrise but not this morning. 

This wasn't how she expected her life to pan out. When she was younger, girls she knew had concrete plans. Her mother and grandmother, they had concrete plans too. Emiko didn't have a concrete plan, she never set a timeline for her unfolding life. Her dreams never involved a rich husband, two children, a house with a view of the mountains. Fulfillment in repetition and infant smiles, sex every Sunday if she and her husband remembered. Those thoughts never filled her head, but she longed and planned for more than _this_.

All the girls she used to know are married. They probably had those dreams as children. She sees them every so often at the combini, proudly pregnant and full of cheer despite the economic struggle of a writhing population. They're full of strange cohabiting pride, like they've taken on another identity. Their lives are now represented by their husbands. Emiko is jealous of their security but not of their lostness. She feels she wants to make her own way, that she wants to be known for being Emiko, not Kenji. Not Inoue. Not Masahiro. Right now, she's Emiko with the shitty apartment. With the total lack of financial prospects. Oh well.

She smooths on her tights, careful of ladders. The financial crisis worries everybody, from the bankers to single women who can't afford new hosiery. For all the old girls have lost themselves, they never have ladders in their tights. Perhaps it's a worthy trade-off, having silky legs. She isn't sure - hates wearing tights anyway, but the weather still isn't warm enough to justify going without. Wrapping her coat around her, she picks up the bento box she made the night before, slides it into her bag. It's an old and battered tin which some of her co-workers pinchingly call _vintage_.

Emiko tends to reject the modern. Tokyo is full of cartoons, disgustingly bright and surreal. Some of the women in her office have pink boxes tied with ribbons and lace, some have ones branded with Pikachu or Sailor Moon. Some have ones shaped like hearts or clouds. The world, she thinks, has somewhere gone off-course. It's part of why Japan is the way it is – bright and plastic-shiny, people accept what they shouldn't. If nothing seems real then perhaps nothing is. The world has changed somewhere and Emiko feels that she's lived through that change, if not literally then emotionally. A feeling of disjointedness, of not understanding things around her. Of not buying into the dream. Of wanting more than lurid yellow cartoons, of more than women fighting with star-topped wands. Of more than those who live inside their computers. Of more than those who stop in Shibuya all day to watch the adverts on the big screens, sky high and as powerful as God. Of wanting _more_ , period.

 

 

Work is the same as it always is, a reassuring scene of stability. Emiko works for an online cosmetic company. Her background in linguistics has led to translating _maybe she's born with it, maybe it's Maybelline_ into Japanese for its website. It's rather ironic given that she doesn't wear any, but her boss doesn't seem to care. The job pays the bills and satisfies her well enough. She left a job that paid more because it didn't feel right. In this office, the women outweigh the men. It may be because of the nature of the company or that Japan's superior sex have been drafted into saving the economy, Emiko doesn't know. What she does know is that she's thankful for not having to make coffee all day, to have to bear the hungry looks of her superiors. The other women may be shallow but she likes their naivety after so much masculine cunning.

“Hi,” Kiko says when she walks into the office. Kiko is her best friend, a somewhat startling fact since she understands make-up and carries a bento box with sakura petals on it. Kiko plays Pokemon and insists on talking about it – about leveling up and type matching, ice versus fire, grass versus something or another. Emiko hadn't expected to like Kiko so much but she's just, well, Kiko.

“Hi,” she says, sinking into her chair. The sky is cloudy outside and the office is dimmer than it usually is. “Good weekend?”

Kiko taps her mouth with her pen. She's in charge of customer complaints and she often uses stalling gestures when she's thinking. Her patient nature makes her ideal for the job – and probably for being Emiko's friend, too. “Mm,” she says. “Not bad. Stayed in, though, what a waste. I guess it's hard for everybody, not having any money. I just wish I could afford to go out.”

“Yeah,” Emiko says. Pay day seems a long way off. “Yeah, it's rough. You should've come over. I wasn't doing anything.”

“I had dinner with my mother,” Kiko says, pulling a face and swiftly undoing it when she catches the attention of older women in the office. “I mean,” she leans in, conspiratorially. “You know how it is, right? Your brother's younger, I know. But you should be glad you don't have a younger sister.”

“I am,” Emiko laughs. “You have no idea. My mother probably is, too. I'm quite enough daughters all on my own.”

“There just isn't the same pressure,” Kiko says. “On men as women, you know. Your brother won't have to get married for a while yet – but my sister, urgh. She's won my mother's heart now, that's the truth. 'Oh, Kiko' is all my mother says. 'When will _you_ be getting married?'”

“You're twenty six,” Emiko says. “It's not like you're thirty sex. Cut yourself a break. How old's your sister?”

“Twenty two,” Kiko says. “Not young, either, my mother says. My dad, he just wants to stop talking about weddings. It's hell for him with her still living at home and my mother only wanting to talk about dresses and flower arrangements. I guess he'll be glad to get her out.”

“Men don't have to think about things like this until they're older,” Emiko says. “I'm just twenty seven and my mother asks me every time I call her, whether I've met a nice man yet. My brother's not much younger and yet she couldn't care less about him.”

“Weddings are happy occasions,” Maki says from her corner of the office. She processes orders and little else. “Or at least, they should be. Younger girls don't seem to understand that anymore. Why do you think that is?”

Emiko shrugs. “Maybe because younger girls are starting to realise that they can have other things, too.”

“Not me,” Kiko says. “I'm so jealous of my sister I can't breathe.”

“Oh, Kiko,” Emiko begins, but she's interrupted by Maki.

“I think it's a sad day when girls care less and less about choosing a life partner. It'll only have negative consequences in the end, with a divorce rate heading through the roof. Look at the US – that's what happens there, because women decided that finding a man wasn't their top priority anymore.”

“Yet men have always managed to balance their career and their love lives,” Emiko says. “Because they do the former and women manage the latter. If we stopped chasing and making decisions, they'd struggle just as much, don't you think? It's because younger girls are trying to work and play.”

“You think men should do the chasing, then?”

“I think they should make more of an effort,” Emiko says. “At the moment, it's up to the girl to decide whether a man is suitable marriage material, the guy just goes along with it. I think things should be more equal.”

Maki smiles, indulgently. “I hope you're prepared to wait. I suppose you young girls have time to wait.”

“Tell our mothers that,” Kiko says. “The way mine goes on, you'd think I was drying up. Thing is, the more she worries about it, the more I worry about it.”

Emiko smiles. “I'd rather have a guy I loved than a guy who was convenient,” she says. “And I'd rather he came out with it. That he contributed somehow rather than just deciding that I was worth settling for. Don't you think it's giving up?”

“I think men just know what they know and nothing more,” Kiko says. “We have to lead them or nothing gets done.”

“Oh, God,” Emiko says. “I'd rather find myself accidentally landing with the right guy than settle knowing that my husband was wrong for me. Even if accidentally means it doesn't happen for a while, or not at all. I'd rather be alone.”

“She's normally so serious,” Maki says. “What a view on love!”

Frowning, Emiko says, “Marriage shouldn't be a business transaction. Finding love isn't certain, it isn't predictable. People seem to think it's a done deal, that it can be settled on like business.”

“There was once a time when men used to write poetry,” Maki says. “And on the strength of that poetry and his presentation of it, he would find a good woman. What do you think about that?”

Emiko sits and thinks, logging into her e-mail and casting an eye over her inbox as she formulates a response. “I don't know,” she says. “I think that it was unequal back then, too. Poetry is romantic, sure, but at that point women couldn't leave the house. Her role was to sit in and receive poetry. Maybe some of the girls wanted to write poetry in response. Maybe they wanted to get out and see the world. Men were contributing but they were bidding on women, women who couldn't refuse them. Both parties should be bringing something to the table, weighing each other up. Both should be writing poetry.”

“Some of the women did write poetry,” Maki says. “Are you a woman who likes to write poetry, Emiko?”

“No,” Emiko laughs. “It's not my style. Remember my last boyfriend – his idea of poetry was leaving me a shopping list before he went to work.”

“Oh, yes,” Kiko giggles. “Socks – I need socks. Argyle. Blue or black, never green. Check the cotton content – 90% or above only!”

“Like an order,” Maki says. “I get orders like that right here! Be glad you didn't marry _him_. You'd be better off waiting forever than marrying a man like that. And I say that as a lifetime romantic.”

“That's what I mean,” Emiko says. “Imagine the wedding. One tux, long leg length, finest material only. Shoes, polished properly. Corsage, rose only, red never pink. And under no circumstances a cravat!”

“Ah, sometimes it'd be nice to have a man who paid attention to things like that, wouldn't it?” Kiko says. “My last boyfriend – I would cut half my hair off and he wouldn't notice it unless I asked what he thought.”

“And then he'd say, 'yeah, yeah, it's nice, striking', as if he hadn't completely missed it,” Emiko says. 

“Hey,” Maki says. “There are some good men left, you know. Yoshiko, for one-”

“Oh,” Kiko says. “Here we go. The chronicles of good husbandry. Episode 68.”

“Breakfast in bed?” Emiko says. “A foot rub? Pancakes in the shape of hearts?”

Maki just glares at them both. “Flowers,” she says. “Picked from the garden.”

Kiko tilts her head to one side. “See,” she says. “Why can't I find a man like that?”

“They were lost in the seventies,” Maki says. “You two were born too late.”

“That's what my grandmother says,” Emiko says. “That all the good men were born in the twenties. That there'll never again be men as good as those.”

“It's all pretty bleak,” Kiko says. “I don't think it can possibly work like that, can it? When the millennium happened, all the good men ran out? It sounds like a sci-fi movie...”

 

 

The two women walk to the train station together. Once there they go in different directions but they like to walk together, letting the office leave their minds. If they were married, things would be different. Emiko is glad that they're not and things aren't. It means that she's noticed that Kiko has spent the entire day itching for its end. Emiko has wanted to confront her alone since the morning. 

“You're going on a date,” she says. 

Kiko looks at her. “No, I'm not,” she says. “What makes you think that?”

“You're wearing your best dress,” Emiko says. “And your good coat. Your mother's jewelry. You've done your hair. Either you like somebody in the office or you've got a date.”

“I hate that you notice everything,” Kiko says, scowling. “It's weird that somebody who does that is so self-unaware.”

“That's not a word,” Emiko says. “And if it were, it wouldn't apply to me.”

“Sure it does,” Kiko says. “Even if it's not a word. You don't have a clue about yourself. About me, sure. But not about you. You don't know who you are.”

“I do,” Emiko says. 

“No,” Kiko says. “I don't think you dress like that to please yourself. You're stuck between being a feminist, this weird unpatriotic creature, and just being yourself. You know, beneath the seriousness. You have a personality, too. You should let people get to know you more.”

“You're saying that I'm not a set of principles.”

“Yeah,” Kiko says. “You don't have to take life so seriously. I mean, fuck, the world is crazy, right? No point in trying to see logic in it. Not everything reflects on you. Sometimes things just are. People don't notice stuff as much as you do. Nobody really cares what your bento box looks like, or whether you want to date Kenji from-”

“You're dating _Kenji_?” Emiko says. 

“It's just a date,” Kiko says. “A few dates. This is our fourth. I haven't made up my mind yet.”

“Wow,” Emiko says. “Kenji the Serial Train Groper.”

“Those reports were never confirmed,” Kiko says, stubbornly. “And anyway, he's really nice. I prefer to give people a chance.”

Emiko laughs. “You always did,” she says. “And then another, if they wasted their first.”

“Better than no chance at all,” Kiko laughs. “Cut people a little slack. Just because they can't meet your ridiculous standards, doesn't mean they're not worth it.”

“I don't have ridiculous standards,” Emiko says. “Do I?”

“A bit,” Kiko says. “The world isn't ready for you yet and if you keep trying to force it to be what you want, you're going to miss out. Men aren't ready to be the man you want. You're setting yourself up for failure. You gotta give men a bit of slack – they didn't ask for this hierarchy. They don't realise things, not the way you do.”

“I'm not giving up on what's important,” Emiko says. “Too many girls do that and it's why things haven't moved on. I'm not saying everybody has to believe but if those who do give up then when will it change? When will the world progress?”

“Not saying that,” Kiko says. “Just – it's a hard message, so you need to be soft delivering it. Or you'll only hurt more than you heal.”

“Softly, softly,” Emiko muses. “I like that.”

“Yep,” Kiko says. “And for the record – your grandmother was wrong. So's Maki. There are good men around. I need to believe that, because wars don't breed good men. Mothers breed good men. Women do. So if you have faith in women, have faith in the men, right?”

 

Emiko takes the train home from work. It's busy in the evenings but she doesn't mind. Watching the salarymen, the bankers and the teachers, it's reassuring to feel that she's part of something. A great group of people who take it upon themselves to attend a workplace, work hard, take home money to survive. A great collection of bees all buzzing together. She couldn't stay at home and raise children. She'd miss the taste of honey.

Sometimes the odd character gets on the train. Most days six is too late so when they do, it's a bit of a treat. Emiko's part of the city caters well to strange people and their distinction makes those travelling from the city centre baulk. The strange people are as disgustingly bright and surreal as Tokyo itself but their very existence is subversive. They bridge fantasy and reality. They take down the colours from the great screens in Shibuya and smother themselves in them. In doing so, they remind everybody of the humanity around them. 

Most people don't like them, because they're shocking, too different not to be made out of pixels. Most people don't want to touch different – except in their dreams, except through their screens.

After four stops, such a character boards the train. He pauses for a moment before shuffling to the nearest seat, diagonally placed to Emiko. She makes no bones about looking at him, drinking in the colours. He's young with long hair on one side on his head and no hair on the other. He looks as though he should be in school and from his nervous glances, she assumes that she's right. When he catches her eye he looks straight down at the floor, then up once more when he thinks she might have looked away. His eyes are huge, exaggeratedly because he's wearing coloured contact lenses. Her gaze remains solid and he slowly starts to smile. He's young enough not to realise how obvious he is and the smile is disturbingly flirtatious. Emiko realises that he's used to women looking bashfully or irritably away.

The woman sitting beside Emiko looks up from her book with an alarmed expression. Out of the corner of her eye, Emiko watches her look left, right, down at the floor, then back at the boy opposite. She opens and closes her mouth as if she wants to say something but doesn't feel able to. Eventually, she catches Emiko's eye. 

“Don't you feel that teenagers are getting too brazen?” she says. 

Emiko looks at her. “I think we all have to start somewhere,” she says. 

“Hm,” the woman says. “You think so?”

“Presumably your...” she looks down at the woman's hand. “Husband had to start somewhere. The big romantic journey. He probably started by smiling at women on trains.”

“Well,” the woman says. “I think he would have done it without looking so...creepy. Look at his teeth.”

“Now you're being rude,” Emiko says. The boy's teeth aren't in the best condition, granted, but it's not something he could help. Smiling despite poor dental health seems to her something rather brave. 

“He started it,” the woman says. “I really wish I didn't have to take the train.”

Emiko looks down, nothing more to say. As she does, she notes that the woman is reading a translated DH Lawrence. It makes her smile and when she looks again at the boy, he's looking into space with a strange expression. She struggles to comprehend it as she studies him. He has white plastic strands hanging down, typical of a clueless kid attending to his music and not much else. He bobs his head in time with the music, completely unaware of what the two women are saying about him. Despite his obvious oddities, Emiko feels a strange fondness for him – he reminds her of her brother. Short and rumpled, as if he's slept in his clothes. Smiling and naïve and still feeling that life is joyful. That's her brother, to a tee. She imagines that at grad school, he smiles at older women all the time. 

The woman gets to her feet as the train pulls into its fifth stop. She stuffs her book into her bag and unites Emiko and the boy with a hard glare. Outside, the world is still downcast, full of evening clouds. It looks like it might rain and Emiko hasn't brought her umbrella. Typical. The boy watches the woman disembark without expression or comment. He shrugs, almost to himself. As the train doors slam shut with a testy beep and the train rolls off, Emiko continues to watch him as he scrolls through his music. He has a neon t-shirt on with a phrase in English plastered across the chest, mistranslated.

As he's making a music selection, he looks up at her again, now full of confidence. He doesn't drop his gaze. His hand slows down on the scroll-wheel as he takes her in, slowly, head to foot. She likes the way he pays her attention. The way he seems to see through her, the way other people just don't try to. When he cocks his head at her, nods her over, she only takes a second to pause. On the one hand, she shouldn't talk to strangers on the train. On the other, he's just a child. Decidedly reckless, she rises to her feet, crosses the train and sits down beside him. He yanks his headphones out of his ears.

“Reio,” he says. He doesn't hold out his hand. Teenagers don't these days.

“Emiko,” she returns. “How old are you?”

“Older than you think,” he says. 

“I bet,” she says.

“How old are you?”

She looks at him, wearily. “Older than you think,” she says.

“Hey, I thought you were twenty one,” he says.

“Stop hitting on me,” she says. “You don't have a chance.”

“Why not?”

“Because you're not old enough to drive.”

“Maybe I just like the train.”

She gives him a look. “You have a car on your bag,” she says. “A Ferrari 355. You don't like the train.”

“You're right,” he says. “And smart. And you know about cars. That means I like you already. Here, help me pick some music.”

She leans over, trying not to get too close as she struggles to read the small text on his iPod screen. She'd been expecting a host of terrible music but in reality, she recognises many of the songs he scrolls through. Songs from her teenage years, from the moments of casual happiness, fleeting regret. Sex and drink and the kisses of men. 

“You have good taste,” she says. 

“I like music,” he says. “And cars. My two passions.”

“Hm,” she says. “That one.”

“Gotta love a girl who appreciates U2,” he says, obligingly. “What are your passions?”

She crosses one leg over the other and thinks for a moment. “I like to read,” she says. “And I like politics. Debating. I'm trying to start a debating society for women at the moment.”

“Fuck,” he says. “You're one serious girl. I'm starting to think you're forty one. Isn't there one already?”

“That includes women? Sure. It's illegal not to, right? But in reality, men don't seem to keen to let women join. They'll find an excuse.”

“So it's okay to exclude men from your society?”

“Not exclude men,” she says. “I just don't think many men will want to join a society run and populated by women. It's majority rule. The male societies get away with intimidating women because there are more of them present. In my society, I guess the same will happen in reverse.”

“You should let me join,” he says.

“You like women, huh,” she says. “That's hardly a surprise.”

“Nah, I'm a good debater,” he says. “Look, we're debating now. Don't you think I'm a good debater?”

“You're alright,” she says, smiling. “We could try you out.”

“That sounds good,” he says. “Being tried out by a lot of women.”

“It's not that kind of society,” she says. 

“In my head, it-”

“Hey,” she says. “I have a kid brother, I know enough about how your mind works already.”

“I wish I had an older sister like you.”

“That's wrong on so many levels.”

“No, it's not,” he says. “Unless you like wrong.”

“Not that kind of wrong.”

“Tough crowd,” he says. “I'm the youngest in my family. Everybody says my jokes suck.”

“Let me guess,” she says. “The black sheep.”

“Nah, we're all black sheep,” he says. “Eccentric family. What about yours?”

“We're pretty normal,” she says. “High fliers, I guess. My brother is training to be a lawyer, like my father.”

“What about your mother?”

“She keeps the house.”

“Mine too.”

“It's what mothers do here,” she says. “Houses do need a lot of keeping.”

“I guess,” he says. So why are you on a train? Shouldn't you be keeping house?”

“Please,” she says. “We're heading for the same stop. You know how little house there is to keep around there.”

“True,” he says. “So you're a career girl?” Most people say that like they'd say _martian_ but he says it like he's used to hearing it, to saying it.

“I'm just a woman,” she says. “I don't like labels.”

“Oh,” he says. “You're _that_ girl.”

“Shut up,” she says, wondering exactly what that means. Whether a girl who shirks labels just wins another one altogether. “So what's your dream?”

“Music,” he says. “I work in a record shop. One day I wanna sell what people put out, if you get what I mean.”

“So your aspiration is to own your own shop?”

“Yeah, maybe,” he says. “I've always wanted my own little square of something. I can't sing, so. Have to make money where I can, make my passions work for me. My own little earner. So I can buy a Ferrari, like the one on my bag. Maybe I'd need more than one shop, I dunno. I don't spend much money though so I figure I'd be able to afford one in ten years or so. At the rate the economy's going, maybe sooner.”

“Material,” she says. “The kids today, they're material. Don't you think?”

“Everything's about money,” he says. “Especially now. With everything going to pot and all. And hey, you seem to be as bad as anybody else with your briefcase and your suit on. Do you think the world will run out of money?”

“It might,” she says. “My father says it might. He's pretty pessimistic, though. I prefer to think that they'll sort it out. They're paid enough, the people in charge, to be able to do something. Though money doesn't always equal competence.”

“I hope so,” he says. “I mean, you're right, but I prefer optimism myself. It'd be nice if there were still musicians around when I get to having my own shop. It'd be nice if there were still people wanting to buy music. Maybe by then people will just have music injected into them.”

“Injected?”

“Yeah,” he says. “Like botox. People get their wrinkles injected right out. People even get liquid diets that way, or so I read. People get all sorts of stuff put right into their bodies. Maybe in the future, music will just get implanted into the brain. We won't have iPods, we'll just walk around with music in our heads.”

“You are very strange,” she says.

“You don't sound like that's a bad thing. Y'know, strangeness.”

“It's not,” she says. “But I hope that day never comes.”

“Me too,” he says. “Me too.”

 

As she leaves the train at the ninth stop, she presses her business card into his hand. His palm is warm unlike her own and she finds herself asking him to call her sometime. 

 

The apartment isn't any messier than it was when she left it that morning. It doesn't need keeping. Through the window, the trains continue to roll past. She thinks about Reio, on his way somewhere else – he didn't live in her district, after all, and it was with sadness that she left him behind. He didn't have a business card so she left him her own, not really understanding why. She's not exactly in the habit of talking to young boys on trains. 

She hangs up her coat and stands, hands on hips, surveying the apartment. She could pick up some cushions and fluff them, the way her mother used to do when she was dissatisfied with life. She decides that she's not in the mood. Instead, she logs into her inbox, not tired after an entire day of online communication. She's been communicating with men in different countries for months now. The advantage of speaking English is that it widens up your love life – perhaps they should tell you that at school.

The other advantage of speaking to men all around the world is their incomprehension of Japanese social structures. Plenty of men are capable of accepting her for what she is and she's grateful for that indulgence. She thinks about Kiko, all trussed up for a man's appreciation, and can't find a way of relating to it. All of her relationships have been looser, less structured, less comprehensible. She's dated a string of serious men who regarded her as an equal, somebody to confide in. With some of them, she'd play the serious career woman they loved to nod to at corporate parties. At weekends, they'd smoke pot and listen to Billie Holliday and fuck for hours. Get all the aggression out. Maybe Kiko is right. She doesn't know herself except in flashes of the past, in small moments with other people. The only way to see yourself, some say, but for Emiko it's like looking at a Picasso painting of yourself. Fragmented and unsure, the pieces not fitting together to make a whole. 

Sometimes she considers just shooting out of here, finding something elsewhere. She could travel abroad and try to find pieces of herself, spread around the globe. Impossible to get to know herself here, when every day involves a certain amount of gritting one's teeth. But then, her mother always says that you can't get to know yourself by running away. Instead, Emiko writes messages to men she'll never meet and she goes to bed unhappy.

Sometimes, she shows them indecent pictures. She knows that if she were caught doing this by anybody she knew, she'd be mortified. She understands how much of a hypocrite it makes her. On the one hand she protests that men should like women for _themselves_. And on the other, she places her breasts at the forefront. The bow of the ship. Proud of them and their devastating effect on men. She luxuriate in the compliments these trinkets afford her. It all feels fractured and wrong and she wants, more than anything, to understand why she does things so opposed to her beliefs. 

_Gorgeous pic_ , one of the men has replied. A geographer. She's had vague hopes that he might end up in Japan studying rock faces or sea changes or something. _That's one valley I'd like to ramble into._

She makes a face and logs out, without replying.

For the thirteenth time that week, she logs onto _the_ website and studies its pictures. The women on it are about as attractive as she is, with breasts of a similar size, hips with similar curve. If men would pay to see those pictures, no doubt they'd pay to see hers. It makes sense. And she's already letting some men see things, men she talks to, men who the more she gets to know, the less she wants to. What's the harm in letting some men she'll _never_ speak to see, if they're prepared to pay for the pleasure? In a lot of ways, it's more convenient because of its anonymity.

It's just that first step that's troublesome. The knowing that the moment she uploads her first picture, she'll officially be moving from a vaguely defensible position into something different, something directly at odds with what she believes in. At the moment she's in some sort of relationship with these men, albeit solely online. Sending one or two pictures could be considered romantic or sexy, committed. Plenty of women do that all the time. Offering up naked pictures to men she isn't dating, for a profit, puts her in the position of being a sex worker. The ultimate in ironic vocations for a practicing feminist. She thinks about what her mother would say. 

Her mother would stop saying anything. Would stop speaking, altogether. This isn't the world she was born into.

Emiko closes down the browser and goes to make a cup of tea. She sits on the windowsill and looks out at the grey sky and the rusted buildings. Listening to the rattle of the train, she swallows and leans her face against the glass. She thinks about Kiko's sister, trying on dresses and veils and practicing holding flowers in her hands. How two women could be so different – one a vision of white twirl in front of the mirror, the other a vision of white skin on the Internet.

People make generalizations about this country's women all the time but it seems to her that Japan has always produced and continues to produce a wealth of extraordinary women. From the court ladies who flouted social boundaries by publishing novels to the modern girls, the ones who want to marry and the ones who want to fuck. The women who cheat, the women who spend tens of thousands in the host cafes. The women who take their clothes off online and the ones who continue to old tradition of binding themselves in with fabric. The women who like to be told they're beautiful and the women who like to know for certain. There's no simple formula for the construction of a Japanese woman. In a way, she's proud of that. In another, she wishes she could be Kiko's sister, turning in front of her mirror like a doll in a music box. 

She doesn't want to get married. She doesn't want to settle. She just wants what most women want – to be loved, so completely and securely so as to know herself and give it to somebody else without thought, without boundaries, without question. She wants not to think, if only for a moment. If only for one blissful second. 

She wonders how Kiko is doing on her date as she drinks her tea.

 

 

_June, 2008_

 

Jin says goodbye to the guys he plays with, wishes them luck with patching up their beat-up trainers and their beat-up hearts. The advance of summer means that they can stay out well after eleven but nobody is interested. Hardly anybody hits the streets at night because of the financial markets and, well. Everybody has bigger fish to fry than to stop and listen to some street buskers. Jin gets that – it's just that he worries now, about things that never concerned him before. He lugs his guitar along after him and decides to walk it, rather than catch the train. A few yen saved here and there could make all the difference, next time the landlord comes after him. Other reasons for the decision too, but they're less savory.

The walk is thirty, maybe forty minutes at most but it allows him to see things that he otherwise wouldn't. The couple who regularly fight, at ten thirty each night there's always something going on inside their house. Usually it's about money but sometimes they yell and shriek about this girl and that girl. Then there's the couple whose windows are lined with enormous frilly curtains. They call themselves Charles and Edina. Jin thinks he could watch them all day, the man in his top hat and tails and the woman in her giant skirts. Like something out of a film. Like the posters he saw in Roppongi for the upcoming ballet about Nazi Germany. Men in the Gestapo uniform, finished off with tights and pointe shoes. The world is crazy. He thinks he'll write a song about it all someday.

There's a woman who undresses in front of her window and Jin wishes he could say he was the type of guy who doesn't look. He does slow down as he passes her apartment and he does observe out of the corner of his eye. She takes her time with it and he rarely gets more than a glimpse – he'd have to stop for more and, well, that's what the Internet is for, he tells himself. On the really good nights walking home, he gets to see all of these strange people once after the other. First, the arguing couple discussing divorce and the organisation of assets. What's left of their life together being torn apart across the table like Sunday dinner. Then the couple from a different era – Dickensian with an awkward Asian slant. Uninhibited and unashamed, he'd like to live like that.

And then the girl he doesn't know by the window, her body like a streetlight in the dark. 

One day he knows that she'll look down and see him in the street. He wonders what she'll do – hurry to cover herself up or perhaps she'll watch him right back. He isn't sure which one he'd prefer and that's why he never walks too slowly. A part of him doesn't ever want to be caught. So as she's standing by the window with her hands on her body he forces himself to keep walking, not out of respect or dignity but out of a childish need not be caught. He could be a better man than this, he thinks, but he doesn't yet want to be.

Still, it puts him in a bit of tailspin, as it always does. As normal when he gets home he regards the mess and then just as quickly disregards it. He feeds the cat who sneaks in through the window, the stray he doesn't want to take ownership of but feels guilty about nonetheless. Cats are easier than people and this one especially so – she's rotund and loud with enormous paws and a scrutinizing look. As she eats, he turns on his computer. He eats the half of a turkey sandwich he finds in the fridge (the cat gets the best of his leftovers, typical) as he waits for it to boot up. He's in the mood for something voyeuristic. The glimpse of the woman by the window has left him in the mood for something coy, something that wants to hide from him. American isn't going to do it this time. 

He's spoken to the other guys in the band about _the_ website but they don't get it. Nobody else seems to. His brother just laughs at him when he brings it up – what's fun about not seeing the whole picture, he asks. What's the point in paying to see a body and only getting one part? Reio likes faces, like eyes and mouths and really explicit stuff. Stuff that would've shocked Jin when he was his age. And Ryo – Ryo likes the kinky stuff. He always did, introduced Jin to some of the strangest magazines when they were at school. Jin's open-minded but really, he likes what he likes and a big part of that is the hidden treasures he finds on the website. Sometimes it's just sexier not to know. To just imagine. 

He's always had a big imagination.

When he logs on, there have been plenty of updates. The site never seems to lack people like him and he's glad for that, because the more people arrive the more the site seems to grow. It's pathetic but Jin doesn't know what he'd do if this place went down in flames. He wonders whether porn is affected by the economic climate. Doesn't seem to be around here – that's the amateur market for you. The worse the economy gets, the more people are willing to sell what they have. And it pays good money, a site like this. All of the clips are available at first at the same price and once bought, must be rated. The higher the user rating, the higher the price rises to download the clips. It's a simple concept but it works, an erotic stock market.

The highest-rated girls, known as _Northerners_ , are out of Jin's price-range so he dismisses them outright. Prefers the mid-range. Some of these girls are clumsy and shy, too, which he likes. The awkwardness lends itself to true voyeurism whereas the Northern girls are too practiced, too considered. The further South the ratings go, the shyer and less secure the girls get. Really far South, the _Southerners_ , it feels wrong to watch those clips. The price goes down daily as men turn their noses up and their wallets away. The girls in those videos are prim and dismissive. That's not Jin's thing and he doesn't go there unless he's seriously out of pocket. Yet the Northerners aren't amateur anymore and their confidence is off-putting. The mid-range works. It's good value for money, too. Jin scrolls down the daily ratings and notes that some of the girls that were mid-range last night are rising up, hour by hour. A lot of guys like the middle, which means that eventually the middle becomes the top. C'est la vie. 

_Comepass dot com_ , the site is called. Not particularly clever or original but Jin's always liked puns.

He has a range of girls that he keeps an eye on, because they cater particularly to his tastes. Some of them are especially coy – they know how to use their bodies and just off-screen, you can see the movement of their wrists. Some of them go all out and show everything but most don't. One girl in particular, you never see her face. You see most of her body in her pictures and her videos but never her face. Jin likes that. He likes that he knows how her body curves, that he knows where her birthmarks are, but he doesn't know the most basic thing about her. He wouldn't recognise her in the street.

Knowledge but not knowledge.

She has beautiful breasts, full and firm in her hands. She holds them well, she knows what she wants. Her hair is long and she's tall. There's no particular grace to her but Jin finds it sexy, the awkward placement of her limbs.

Confidence but not confidence.

She's just started releasing clips recently. She started with pictures, growing slowly more and more explicit. Never showing her face. Her profile is uncharacteristically blank – the other girls use theirs to link to more pictures, more clips, to online donation. Some post their intimate measurements for temptation. Some have a comment box, others a request poll. This girl has nothing. No profile picture. No data. No nothing.

She's always touching herself. Just with her hands, never anything else. Never anything inside her that isn't real. Always and always just the length of her fingers, deep and soft inside. She's surprisingly noisy. He likes that about her – his ex was, too. But unlike his ex she has the confidence of anonymity. She shows little self-consciousness when sometimes you catch the base of her chin on the camera. Attentive to it the way she'd attend to an onlooker, maybe, coolly, indifferently. It seems to make a judgment about him and he likes that. Her fingers tremble when she's close, because they're numb with movement, he supposes. She likes it really hard, really fast. 

Maybe she fakes it. He's considered that – and whether it really matters, anyway.

She rates in the middle ground and hasn't moved much. Other guys don't show much interest. Maybe that's why she's started on the clips, Jin thinks. He watches them, day to day to day. She's not like the girl in the window, she's not real. And it's better. He can put anything he wants onto her. Any projection, any mood. She could be anybody and he could be anyone, too. He hopes she never goes further North. If he couldn't afford her, he feels it'd really impact on him.

Reio says that he needs a life. There may be some truth in that statement but Jin figures it's better, slightly, than visiting prostitutes.

 

 

When he goes to bed at night he dreams about her – soft and plummy and rich and maybe, just maybe, what her face looks like. What her eyes would look like, up at him, eyelids moving with every last thrust. What her face would look like as thunder broke out over it. 

He wakes at intervals, his skin on fire.

 

 

Emiko wakes up in the morning. She's started sleeping since finally signing up to the website that preoccupied her thoughts. It's odd, that – she had thought that she'd feel worse after each picture and each clip. In reality, she feels less and less of anything. The financial pay-off helps her to sleep. Maybe the shame, too. She hasn't regretted it. She wishes she could say she has. It'd make her a better person. 

Reio hasn't been on the train in over two months. She hadn't expected to see him again but it would have been nice. In her heart, she knows it can't have anything to do with _Comepass_ – the kid was sixteen or so, wouldn't have had a credit card. And besides, she never shows her face in the videos. Not a soul could know who she was and yet. And yet. The anonymity that the men can indulge in doesn't extend to her. Everywhere she goes, she expects to be recognised. She expects people to be able to identify her just looking at her. Like having a secret. Like being eleven and having periods – so aware of you think everybody else must know. That's why you're paid to do it, she supposes. Men pay for anonymity, women are paid to give it up.

She feels as though she's losing great dollops of time. She used to pore over her concerns in the morning, drying her hair. Now she feels the moment her feet touch the floor, she's walking out the door. She doesn't worry anymore. The train journey passes in a blink. She no longer remembers the unique softness of putting on her tights – she's so used to touching her own skin that it feels odd to do it without tilting her chin, without putting on an act. Everything feels different. Her own body feels different – no longer her property. Yet she doesn't regret it. She can't regret how good it feels to earn money on her body, to tease and to torment. To imagine that she's worth something physical, like money. Like a future.

When she walks into the office, she has no idea she's about to receive the news she's dreaded for weeks. There isn't anything about the morning that would've tipped her off – no uneasy feelings, no clouds in the sky. A beautiful summer day, a day of financial prosperity, a day of leaving worries behind. When she opens the door, she sees instantly that Kiko's desk is littered with magazines and photographs. Maki is standing around, assuming the role of the proud mother, the harbinger of romance, the eternal optimist. Emiko stops still. The world is slowly shifting and she is always staying still. If Maki is the eternal optimist, Emiko must take on the role of the harbinger of gloom.

“Emi,” Kiko says. “You need to help me. I can't believe it. You won't believe it – he asked me last night. I'm getting married. _Before_ my sister!”

Emiko picks up her feet and takes her first step. Her kneecap feels as though it's made of lead weights.

“God,” she says. “Well – are you happy?”

“Of course I'm happy, idiot,” Kiko says, stepping around the heaps of shiny paper to embrace Emiko in a hug. “Be happy for me.”

“Of course,” Emiko says. “Congratulations.”

“Translation can wait today, can't it? You need to help me pick a dress. I know you'll tell me the right things, help me make the right decision. Right? I can rely on you.”

Emiko looks at the bridal catalogues, at the women on the front twirling white satin in their bedroom mirrors. Pushes away the thoughts of Kenji on the train, leering at underage girls and reaching out his scrawny hand to their skirts.

“Sure,” she says. “Of course I will. You know I will.”

 

 

The weather turns warmer by the day and the people stay out longer to listen to Jin and his amateur band. The money isn't great but it's enough with the other odd jobs for him to keep paying his rent. For the moment. And summer is their best time – all in all, he feels positive about the future. There's a mood of joy and sunshine in the air despite the financial meltdown and he's determined to tap into that. The women who walk by each get their own separate smile as he tempts them to stop for a song or two. He's upstaging everybody else, he knows that, but he's the singer – it's what's expected of him. Ryo makes disgruntled noises between songs and when Jin looks over his shoulder, he receives a sardonic look in return. It makes him laugh.

They play songs they remember from their childhoods, songs that tap into something in people – it's what Jin loves about this job. It's the memories he ignites, it's the sense of mood he can create. It's performance art. It's theatre. And people listen to him, in a way they never do anywhere else. He can be anything he wants to be and people acknowledge it, they're receptive to it. Japan so often defines people without making any effort to understand and music transcends that. Transcends all sorts of boundaries. Jin appreciates that.

Sometimes, Jin's brother Reio bunks off school and comes to watch. It's not something Jin approves of but then he barely went to school, either. Neither of them are academic and sometimes it feels as though all they have is each other. All anybody has is the love they find in their life – everything else is tenuous. Education, money, skills – all of those rest on having a suitable arena in which to deploy them. Love is there from the moment somebody is born and never runs out. Like music. 

He wants to write a song about this too someday.

Reio does his bit to support the fledging band, by drumming up interest and stopping people who walk by, inviting them to listen to a song or two. Reio is very into the idea of positive change through music – still so young and so optimistic. He believes that music can heal the whole world, wants to own a shop to sell sunshine, to sell hope and glory and wisecracks. He makes Jin believe in it all too. If nothing else, Reio is a great communicator, a great ray of sunshine. He draws people to him and so also to Jin. Jin thinks about hiring him as a manager. What their mother would say. 

They sing three or four songs per set and when Jin looks down into the guitar case, the takings are up on yesterday. He smiles to himself and puts his thumb up behind his back at Ryo. Ryo plays guitar and writes songs that Jin refuses to play, they're too rude and too twisted and it isn't the sort of image he wants for the band. But Ryo above anybody else shares Jin's ambition. Shares his drive to be better and recognises the impact of money on the situation. For the other guys this is just a dream. For Ryo and Jin, it's real. It has to be. They have little else between them. Just love and music. 

 

 

Emiko leaves the office at lunchtime, having spent most of the morning discussing the length of Kiko's veil. Kiko knows that she's pulled something of a coup in upstaging her sister. Emiko wonders whether she's just doing it in order to silence her mother but it'd be rude to ask and ruder still to expect an answer. Kiko has short black hair so Maki suggests a short veil, something that'll soften the contours of her hexagonal face. Something graceful, something archaic and timeless and lost. Maki is a creature of another time. Maybe they all are.

“I want one so long it trails out behind me,” Kiko had said. “So long behind me. I want to go all out. I want to be the girl people talk about years later – _do you remember the girl with that dress_?”

A wedding more memorable than a marriage is Emiko's worst nightmare.

She leaves to get lunch for everybody, claiming to need air. Once walking she finds that doesn't want to turn around and go back. The weather is warm enough to justify leaving her coat behind and just going home but she'd almost certainly get written up and, well. People would ask questions, questions she can't answer. She can't work out what the problem is. Why she sees this situation and just wants to run. Why the thought of the calendar turning to August and to white white dresses just makes her want to be sick. She pushes onwards, past the crazed shoppers, the drunken unemployed and the impatient salarymen on their only break of the day. Women carrying coffee piled high, men on 'cell phones. Teenagers squawking at each other and the high bright sound of the adverts on the television screens. A cacophony of sound, a circus of lights. She crosses the street to get away from it, to escape the snappy sentences, the scream of jingles.

Across the street, the world is a bit calmer. The shops are mainly on the right side so on the left there are less people, less adverts, less everything. A more neglected fragment of the city. With the ringing in her ears toning down, she can take a breath and hear it clear her lungs out. She looks across at Starbucks and decides against sandwiches. She has forty minutes to work out what to buy everybody for lunch – first she just wants to calm her own stomach. As she walks slowly along she starts to hear the sound of music. It's soft and warm like sunshine in spring, when winter has gone on so long that its first touches are magical. She slows down curiously, turning her head left and right.

Buskers, she thinks. It's amateur and hopeful, not too slick or too practiced. She listens for a moment, letting the music drift over her. She's not used to listening to music, barely has any at home except jazz. This isn't jazz, it isn't rock, it isn't anything she knows how to categorize. It's just full to the brim of feeling. Of heart. Of something that she can't touch, sense, feel. It has rhythm, it has life, it has everything she imagines a good song should have. Every ingredient. Only it's more than that. She's surprised that they're just busking. They seem more talented than that.

When she walks past, she fishes into her bag for her purse and drops a note into the guitar case. It's not her intention to stop and to stay – she should get on with it. Be a better friend. A better person for Kiko, who deserves the best. Always has, always will. Only the closer she gets, the more the music feels as though it's water in her bones. In her blood. Flooding her heart and her brain – the less ill she feels. The less tired, the less incapable. The calmer her stomach feels. When she looks up, she's looking right into the face of the lead singer. 

When he looks down past the microphone, past the guitar he's playing, she finds herself looking right back into his eyes. She forgets that some find this confrontational. She forgets that some find it unpleasant. He has the warmest eyes she's ever seen and she can't help but stare, not whilst the music he's playing is flooding through her body like warm air. He stares back, apparently astonished at the tenacity of her stare. 

The song ends or stops somewhat abruptly, one or the other. The man behind the singer steps forward. He's short, stubborn looking. Black hair, dark eyes. 

“You still with us,” he says. “Or are you writing a song? Come on, man.”

“Sorry,” the singer says, suddenly realising himself. She stands, startled, blinking the connection broken. Looking around herself, she's suddenly self-conscious. Not a feeling she has very often.

“I was just-” she says, but can't finish the sentence.

“Thanks,” the man says. “For the money. But we have a set to get on with. Come on, Jin.”

“You're being-” the singer, _Jin_ , says.

She moves on, frowning, puzzled. The eyes of the band, of the crowd, are on her back. When she looks back, they seem as perturbed by it as she does. As Jin does. Only a moment seemed to pass and yet. And yet. 

“That was fucking rude,” Jin says, to Ryo.

“Hey, so's staring,” Ryo says. “So's letting the crowd down. Where the fuck did you go?”

“Nowhere,” Jin says. “What do you mean?”

“You were staring for five minutes,” Ryo says. “You forgot the words. How can you forget what you just did? It just happened. What the fuck, man. Have you been smoking again?”

“No,” Jin says. “I don't – fuck. Leave it. Let's keep going.”

 

Emiko walks, searching her mind for anything that would rationalize the moment. She's sure that she hasn't seen that man before but everything about him seemed familiar. Everything about him seemed right. She has the feeling often that she's lived before, but this time it's so strong she can't push it aside. Everybody thinks they've lived before when they're unhappy with the life they're currently leading. It's a form of escapism. It can't be that. Perhaps he's the kind of man she thought of when she was little and other girls planned for the husbands they were going to have. Perhaps he's something she dreamt up, come to life. Perhaps he's just the kind of man she'd like to be with. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Then as if the universe is conspiring to conjure up the strangest day, she sees Reio coming towards her. A smile spreads across her face. 

“Emiko,” he says, surprised. He doesn't look awkward as if he wants to be somewhere else, as if he wishes he hadn't seen her. He looks warm as he moves to stand beside her. 

“Hi,” she says. “Shouldn't you be in school?”

He grins, sheepishly. “Bunking off,” he says. “Bet you don't approve.”

“Not at all,” she says, laughing. “I guess now I'm enabling you. I'm playing my part just standing here talking to you. I should tell you to go to school this instant.”

“Not likely,” he says. “I said I was a good debater. We can debate it. I'm not going just because you tell me to.”

“I suppose that's smart,” she says. “Not doing what people say, just because they say it. What are you doing instead of school?”

“All sorts,” he says. “Trying to earn some money.”

She looks at him, his soft eyes now minus colour and his strange hair. Suddenly, it clicks. Jin reminds her of Reio, or maybe it's the other way around. Reio's face has been in her mind since that train journey, when she uncharacteristically gave him her telephone number. He made an impression and Jin's uncanny resemblance to Reio is what made her stop. Made her stay. Now it feels as though seeing Jin has brought Reio to life – as though imagining Reio through Jin has made him appear.

“How's your dream going,” she asks. “To own your own shop?”

“Eh,” he says. “Coming along. You're probably wondering why I don't take the train anymore.”

“It had occurred to me,” she says. “Not that – you know. You know what I mean. I don't want you to think I'm interested. You're too young for me. I gave you my card-”

“I didn't call, I know,” he says. “I don't have a 'phone. My folks – we don't have a line. They don't believe in it. And a 'cell, too expensive. Doesn't fit in with my dreams. My first pay-packet, I bought an iPod. I'm just about the music. I don't care for anything else.”

“That's alright,” she says. “I know what you mean.”

“So, the train,” he says. “My parents made me move school. Thought it might help – the last one was too close to my brother's place and I kept staying there. He doesn't live near my parents – it's why I wanted to go there, you know. It felt far away. So they changed my schools and I go home instead, I don't take that train. I still don't go to school, though.”

“I understand,” she says. “Sometimes, family life can be stressful. It might be less so if you went to school. Mothers worry about that sort of thing.”

He makes a face. “I want to learn about business,” he says. “About life. All you learn about at school is what's happened over the course of everything. About history. You just learn about what other people have done. Doesn't exactly encourage you to do anything yourself, you know? Sort of makes you live vicariously.”

“I don't know,” she says. “I liked science as a kid. When I watched the chemistry teacher doing experiments, I wanted to copy them. To change variables, to see if it altered the outcome. Copying helped me. Living vicariously isn't always a bad thing. It all depends on how you use the information you've got.”

“Women are better at that,” he says. “They're used to having to watch and learn. Men are expected to be innovative. To lead.”

“I guess so,” she says. “But plenty of women want to be innovative and lead, and can't.”

“It's a bind whichever way you look at it,” he says.

“Are you a leader?” she asks. 

“No,” he says. “I'm a follower. I listen to music and identify trends and every so often, something comes along that's so good it surprises me. That's what I do. I watch musicians change the face of music and I break a bit off and try and sell it to everybody. There's plenty of good music around here. You have good taste – you'd probably like it.”

He's slowly turning away. Trying to show her clumsily that he has other concerns, places to be, maybe she'd like to come too? There's an anxiety in his face that she didn't see on the train. He's worried about letting somebody down. And she should be too. Besides of which - today, today has been surreal enough already.

“I have to get back to work,” she says. “Sorry. Look, I'm not saying go to school but don't stress out your mother. It's hard, being a parent.”

“Are you one?”

“God, no,” she says. “No. But I've got two so I know something about this.”

“Very serious,” he says, and he's mocking her, obviously. “Come and listen to some music with me. You'll like it.”

“No,” she says. “I need to get back. Come on the train sometime, okay?”

“I'll try,” he says. “Gotta convince my brother to let me hang around his place. Not as easy as it seems.”

“Mm,” she says. “Guess not. Call me, then, if you ever get a 'cell phone.”

“For you, anything,” he says, turning around and walking away. She watches him go with a faint sense of discomfort, until he's just a tiny figure in the distance. He stops by the band, whose music she can no longer hear. She wonders whether they'll be the trend he identifies today. Whether that'll be the last she hears from this Jin. Whether her life is ever going to make sense.

 

Reio trots up to find the set over and Ryo counting the money. He looks pleased for once, which means that he has a chance of following them back to Jin's tonight. They do multiple sets a day which means that the boys will go back to Jin's place and then head out again at around seven. The last time Reio went with them he was left alone, with Jin's computer and subscriptions. That was a good day.

“How'd it go?” he says. “Did I do good work for you guys?”

“Not bad,” Ryo says. “Better than yesterday. We'll keep you, kid. You're better than your brother, anyway. He nearly fucked things up.”

“I didn't,” Jin says, stubbornly. “I had a bit of brain fade, that's all.”

“Couldn't stop staring at this girl,” Ryo snorts. “Stupid dick. Like she'd be interested in somebody like you. Girls like her, they only want one thing. Promotion.”

Reio keeps quiet. It's usually best not to argue or interject when Ryo's talking – he always thinks his opinion is more important than yours. It's something Jin hasn't learnt over the years and Reio thinks it's funny, another band with another feud between singer and lead guitarist. Unfailingly predictable. It's a shame their music is so good, otherwise Reio would find it easy to write them off. The music industry slows with the economy and it's precious difficult to get anywhere anyway without the additional pressures. The idea of them failing is as bad as them never trying to succeed.

“Hey,” Jin says. “How do you know? You don't know her. She could be anybody. You're always putting people in boxes. Judgmental as fuck.”

“Makes life easier,” Ryo says. “You're never disappointed. Boxes work for a reason. People are predictable. Few people live outside the box. Few people are actually all that surprising.”

“ _You're_ predictable,” Jin says. “You make people the way they are. The way they react to you, because you're predictable. Like Ami.”

“Ah, don't talk about that,” Ryo says. “I told her I was sorry. Women.”

“You're a dick,” Jin says. “I don't know how you wound up with a girl at all. Let alone one who wants to settle down with you.”

Ryo makes a face. “Girls aren't what they're cracked up to be,” he says. “You fuck that girl, you'll end up with little better than a blow-up doll. Career girls, they don't make time for anything. You can't have a relationship with somebody who lives in her office, who's permanently attached to her 'cell. It'll just be about sex.”

“I could cope with that right now,” Jin says. “Let me tell you.”

“Don't tell me,” Ryo says. “I don't want to deal with your emotional shit anymore. Just go and do it, or don't. Man, you're harder to work with than my sister.”

“And you're less mature than my brother,” Jin says.

“Oi,” Reio says. “I'm older than the pair of you.”

“Probably true,” Ryo says. “Come on, Jin. Let's go back.”

“Can I come?” Reio asks. “I won't get in the way.”

“He wants to watch your porn again,” Ryo says. “Pervert.”

“He doesn't like my porn,” Jin says. “Says it's boring.”

“That shit _is_ boring,” Ryo says. “You're fucked in the head.”

“Can I come back with you?” Reio repeats.

“Alright, alright,” Jin says, handing Reio his 'cell phone. “'Phone mother,” he adds. “She'll freak out if you don't. I don't want her yelling at me again.”

 

 

When Jin walks home from the evening set, he can't stop thinking about the girl he saw earlier. There's something not right about the whole thing – the way she held his gaze, the way a part of him seemed to dissolve into her. The way he lost a large chunk of time and the way for a second or two he felt as though he was living somebody else's life. Somebody else's time. Looking into her eyes, it was as though she felt the same way. As if they were connected in a strange moment of shifting. He can't explain it but now that she's gone, he can't get her out of his mind.

It's not about sex. He's dated more attractive women in his time and there was nothing all that striking about her except for the tenacity of her face. It's not a physical urge but a feeling of loss – that he's never going to see her again and that somehow, this is of some importance to his heart. Despite not knowing her, he feels as though he's lost her. As he passes through the streets he doesn't hear the arguing. He doesn't pay any attention to the couple in costumes. He walks past the woman in the window, the woman who undresses at the same time each and every night.

He doesn't bother looking up.

He's not himself. Ryo said it and he can't argue with it. Nothing feels right anymore. His life is a snow-globe and it's just been shaken up. 

He unlocks the door and finds Reio asleep on the couch. The baseball is on but the score isn't good – no wonder he fell asleep. When Jin pushes the door shut, Reio wakes with a start and turns his head upside down to look at Jin.

“Uhh,” he says. “Good gig?”

“Alright,” Jin says. “I'm not sure it's worth the effort – the money isn't as good at night. I could get a job in a bar, it'd pay the bills better.”

“It's not music,” Reio says.

“No,” Jin says. “True. What've you been doing?”

“Baseball,” Reio says, waving a hand absently at the screen. “Do I have to go to school tomorrow?”

“Yep,” Jin says. “Spoke to mother earlier. I'm to get you to school any way that I know how.”

“You're not gonna do it,” Reio says. “You're too lazy. You'll sleep in and I'll be gone by the time you wake up.”

“That's what you think, shrimp,” Jin says. He rummages through the kitchen cupboard, finding some packet noodles he pushed to the back weeks ago. They'll do. “But I have plans this time. You won't escape.”

“I don't want to go to school,” Reio says. “What's the point.”

“Fuck if I know,” Jin says. “But you gotta go until you're eighteen. Then you can quit.”

“It's two years away,” Reio says. “Can't I just become your manager?”

“No,” Jin says. “Nice try. Want some of this?”

“Nah,” Reio says. “I'm alright. I ordered in.”

“With my money, I take it.”

“Yep.”

Jin says nothing, so Reio starts to look a bit guilty.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “You know I can't cook.”

“Don't worry about it,” Jin says. “It's not you. I'm just not myself.”

“Why?” Reio asks.

“I don't...I don't know. It's about that girl. Everything's about that girl, isn't that crazy? I don't even know her. I don't know who she is or where she came from, but everything is suddenly...I don't know. It's like my life changed direction and I don't understand why.”

“What happened with the girl?” Reio asks. “I couldn't get it what with Ryo talking crap.”

“Eh,” Jin says. “Nothing. She – she stopped in front of me. She was putting money in the case and she looked at me. And time stopped. It just stopped. And nothing else mattered but her face. Apparently I was speechless for five minutes.”

“I wish I'd seen her,” Reio says. “She must've been hot.”

“Not _that_ hot,” Jin says. “It's not about that. She just – she did something to me. I can't explain it. And I'm never going to see her again. I'm not...cool with that. I feel unsettled about it. Like I should've held out my hands and grasped her in them before she flew away and life rattled on.”

“You and your poetry,” Reio says. “Fuck, man. She's just a girl, right?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I guess. It just – it felt like more.”

“Sometimes that happens,” Reio says. “You meet somebody and there's a connection. You feel like you can tell them anything, that they'll listen. That they'll understand. Sometimes that happens and you feel like you know them when you don't.”

“How the fuck do you know? Have you got a girlfriend?” Jin laughs. “You sound like you've got a girlfriend. Reio's growing up. Fuck, man, you shouldn't be that serious at sixteen.”

“I haven't,” Reio says, scowling. “I just. I met a girl on a train. A woman, really. Anyway, I can relate – we connected. And it's not about her or me, just about two people who click. Isn't it?”

“I think so,” Jin says. “Somebody who gets you. It's so fucking hard to find.”

He stirs his noodles and thinks. He's always had trouble finding girls who understand him – the lifestyle is crazy and financially he has nothing to offer anybody. He writes songs instead of sending flowers, he rushes out in the middle of the night. He's obsessive and passionate and moody and confusing and girls, particularly Japanese girls, don't think he's a catch. A part of him understands that. Another part of him is tired of being misunderstood.

“I think when you meet somebody you connect with,” he continues. “You should try to keep them in your life. How old was this girl you met on the train?”

“More than twenty,” Reio says.

“Fuck me,” Jin says. “I take it back. Forget her. You need playmates your own age. God knows what kind of number a woman like that could do on you.”

“It's not like I'm in love with her,” Reio says, defensively. “I just liked her. She's nice. Most girls are snobby and uptight but she's different. Prickly but in a good way. Smart.”

“What's her name?”

“Emiko.”

Something shifts, like a ripple in a piece of fabric floating along the floor. Jin digs his nails into it, trying to hold onto it, trying to keep time between his fists. Trying not to fall asleep. The world blackens until it's gone. Reio's insistent voice fades to nothingness.

When awareness creeps in again the world is shaking. Only when it stills does he open his eyes. It's the middle of the night, everything is dark and deep around him. He shakes his head and looks around him. The train he's on rocks onwards, endlessly onwards and he stands on it in his pyjamas. The lights flicker above his head. Outside, the world rushes by. Nothing makes sense. The world is changing and unfolding and he doesn't know how to stop it.

 

 

Emiko finds herself walking the streets at night. Something she's never done before and something she doesn't really want to do – her mother always tells her that it's dangerous to invite trouble into your life. Yet she flouts her mother the way she flouts every sane thing in her life and finds herself walking down the street where she heard the music. It's not right, it can't possibly look right – a well-kept woman wandering down the street in heels, in good clothing. She recognises that she looks wealthy and that she's prey in every possible sense to the bad people out at night. She just doesn't care. A part of her hopes that though the street is deserted and the world is quiet, that she might hear the music again.

She stands on the corner where she saw Jin and the band. She closes her eyes as the music drifts over her again, slow and coiling at first and then deep, loud, long. It echoes within her bones, wraps itself around each and every rib like ribbon. When she breathes her heart beats around it, sending a pulse through her body and into her brain. She's shaking. Her eyes closed, she can almost see the music come to life, see an image form through sound. It doesn't make sense but she sees bright skies and blue flowers and a field, a twisting field and a woman spinning, a vision of white.

She shudders with a sudden breeze, a sudden car which honks as it goes past. She's shaken out of her thoughts with the intrusion and the image disappears. The music dissolves away. Any hope she had of piecing together the image is lost. She's never been the type to see music this way. Even to feel music this way. Always the girl who liked music in the background, never the one who truly allowed it in. She feels as though there's something she's missing – not just time, not just increments of time that slip away from her, but meaning. She feels as though her brain operates in a different language now, one she can't speak or understand. She's missing _something_.

She walks to the train station and listens to the noise of the streets, wondering whether that too can evoke imagery. Whether now her brain processes sound, not speech. Whether that's the difference. She passes by the houses, the arguments in the middle of the night, the soft music from upstairs radios, the hushed sounds of sex. How alive the world is at two in the morning surprises her. She would have thought that the world would be still then, a deathly place. There almost seems more life in it now. Nothing forms an image. Nothing reaches into her chest and wraps itself around her. The noise is wonderful and comforting but not emotive. Not meaningful.

When she gets onto the train, there aren't any other people on it. Not even salarymen. To be too late for them is really something, she thinks. It's eerie to ride the train home with no other passengers. The lights flicker on and off as the train rattles through the city and when she passes by a street with a person on it, it makes her jump. The absence of people makes their image all the stronger. Above her head, the advertisements rock backwards and forwards with the movement of the train. Loans companies, dating agencies. Two forms of currency and survival above her head. A can of something rolls across the carriage – maybe beer, maybe diet soda. Alcoholics and teenagers both take the evening trains. She wonders where they are now. 

She wishes Reio were here. He'd know how to make a joke, to make the world seem light again. She wishes anybody were here. The problem with holding to principles, with being serious, is that more than anything else you end up alone. Emiko wishes she could be like Kiko, able to marry a man she doesn't truly know. Able to give herself so freely to somebody without testing them first. Without running a full screening. The train rattles on with its hard ricochet sound and she closes her eyes, feeling a sense of deep emptiness inside. She feels so lonely she could ride the train forever and never get off. So lonely she could just continue rattling along until she ends up somewhere, somewhere she could put down roots in. Die in. She feels as though nobody would care. As though there's nothing to keep her here. As though there's nothing, nothing at all.

She stays on the train past her stop. It's too hard to get up, to start walking. Her face is wet and she doesn't want to touch it, to make it real. She closes her eyes as a world she doesn't recognise flies past, wanting more than anything just to crawl into a small white box and lie still. Just to pause time, just to be able to breathe. She wishes Reio were here to still the world down. She hasn't cried in years. 

“Fuck,” she mutters to herself, wiping her face with her hand. Maybe this is what people mean when they talk about rock bottom.

Suddenly then, the air seems to change around her. When she was younger she would travel with her mother in the car and it would be freezing until the air conditioning warmed up. The feeling of sudden warmth comes back to her now; a coat wrapping around her shoulders, her mother's hands clapping her smaller ones together. And then music deepens and swells, growing down to the train tracks and up towards the tilt of the sky. She hears the guitar and she hears the song – the words don't come but it doesn't matter, because everything else does. She breathes it in and tries to touch the images that floods back behind her closed eyelids. The world spinning in a field of green and the man's eyes so soft and round as he looked at her. The smell of flowers, the taste of rain. The ground under her feet. A plane in the sky. The sound of gunfire.

 

 

When she opens her eyes, she tries to scream but no sound emerges. She claps her hand over her mouth and the moan comes, then, helpless and wilting. Two feet away stands the man, the singer, the pilot, the ground under her feet, the sound of gunfire, the _music_. She struggles for breath as he turns to her. Their eyes meet with the same confusion, the same unknowing, the same connection. She realises that not only can he not hear the music, he isn't playing it – he has no idea what he's doing here.

Knowledge, but not knowledge.

“How did you get here?” she manages to whisper. “Where did you come from?”

He is silent for a moment – looking around him, down his arms and up at the ceiling of the train. “I don't know,” he manages, eventually. “I don't know.”

 

 

He sits down beside her. The train rolls on and neither of them pay attention to its destination. Emiko's apartment is long behind her – the world is long behind her. It occurs to her that she's talking with a man she doesn't know. She feels she does but that's not the same thing. All she knows is that his name is Jin and that he's beautiful, that he plays music and that the music he plays makes her see things that don't make sense. 

“Your name is Emiko,” he says. “Mine is Jin.”

She stares at him. “You're creeping me out,” she says. “First being here, being suddenly _here_ , then knowing my name. How do you know my name?”

“Why are you talking to me,” he says. “If I'm creeping you out? Most girls would run a mile.”

“I guess I'm not most girls,” she says. “Now tell me what you know.”

“Reio met you,” he says. “Reio is my brother.”

She pauses, taking that in. No wonder Jin reminded her of Reio. The family resemblance is strong now that she thinks about it – the same warm eyes, the same soft boyishness. 

“You took my business card from him,” she says.

“No,” he says. “I didn't. I didn't even know you gave him a card – he doesn't have a 'phone. He loses things. But he mentioned you. And a train. And I thought; I knew. I knew how to find you. I was dreaming and now I'm not. I know this doesn't make sense but you have to understand. You have to understand how little my life makes sense right now.”

That she can relate to, she thinks, as she studies him. “When I looked at you,” she says. “When I saw you today, things left me. The world went away. Did you get that feeling? I feel like I know you – but we've never met before. And here you are in your pyjamas with no idea where you came from.”

“Yes,” he says. He turns to her and his eyes are bright and moved. “Yes,” he says, again. “I had that. Exactly that. It keeps happening and I don't know why. Can you...do you know why? Are we both going insane?”

“No,” she says. “I don't. But at the same time, I'm not sure I believe that you...that you didn't take that card. I can understand losing time but knowing things you shouldn't know? I think you're a con-artist.”

“Why would I lie?” he asks. “I feel wrecked about this. I can't sleep. I couldn't possibly have known you'd be here – I woke up here. I might know your name but how can you explain my being here like this?”

It's a good point but good points aren't what she wants. That's never been what she wanted, other people making sense. Other principles somehow invalidate her purpose. Emiko has never been anything except the strength of her opinions.

“All men lie,” she shrugs. “To impress women. To make themselves seem more than they are.”

Jin is thoughtful for a moment. “That's not true,” he says. “I don't want to seem more than I am. That's just setting yourself up for disappointment. I'm disappointing in a lot of ways. Explains why I don't get many dates, I guess. I don't try to impress people.”

“Everybody tries to impress people,” she says. “You do when you sing. You don't sing badly on purpose.”

“I guess so,” he says. “But I also don't pretend that I can sing, either. I can sing. Same with women – I am what I am. Talented or not, good in bed or not. I don't pretend to be anything. I just be myself, you know? I wouldn't lie about being here; it'd be pretty romantic to have that kind of psychic ability. I'd definitely take the credit for something like that.”

“Are you good in bed?” she asks.

He looks at her. “You're fucking rude,” he says.

“Yeah,” she says. “I am. But says you – mysterious stalker. Isn't that ruder than asking personal questions? You brought it up, anyway. Being good in bed.”

“Fine,” he says. “Then are you good in bed?”

She looks at him. “You first,” she says. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Damn straight. I mean – y'know. Women are picky. I try my best.”

“We're not picky,” she says. “We just know what we want. Men have had too long of women just lying still and not asking for anything.”

“Actually,” he says. “Most women I've been with haven't known what they wanted. But somehow it was all my fault when I didn't give it to them.”

“Then you have bad taste in women.”

“See,” he says. “It's always the man's fault.”

“Oh, deal with it,” she says. “You have so much power, you have no idea. If you have power, you have responsibility. You get blamed for everything. Get used to it. You wouldn't switch for a woman's lot and you know it.”

“No,” he says. “Guess not. So, are you good in bed?”

“Spectacular,” she says. 

“Seriously?”

“I'm always serious,” she says. “Didn't Reio tell you that? I met him on a train, too. Maybe there's something between your family and transportation.”

“No,” he says. “He told me your name. That's how I know it. And you don't seem that serious.”

“I'm not serious about sex,” she corrects herself. “About everything else, sure.”

“I like that,” he says. “Sex and music. Take everything seriously but sex and music.”

“It's good music,” she says. “The music you play. I'm surprised you're cavalier about it. I prefer to take my job seriously.”

“That's a shame,” he says. “It's more fun when you don't.”

“Men have that luxury,” she says.

“No,” he says. “Musicians do. You think anybody ever wrote a song by worrying about it?”

Another good point, she thinks. Damnit.

He looks out of the window into the encroaching darkness. They've left the warmth of the city behind and joined the countryside. Fields layered in darkness, choppy mountains in the distance. Everything feels cold. 

“Where are we going?” she asks. 

“I don't know,” he says. “You led us here. You led me here.”

“Did I?”

“Sure,” he says. “See – not everything's my fault. You women know what you want except when you get it. Then you get confused, right? You should be careful what you wish for.”

“I didn't wish for anything,” she says. “I didn't – I was just. I was upset. I've had a difficult week.”

“You wished for something,” he says. “I'm sure that's why I'm here right now. Unless I wished for something, too. And hey, I'm sorry about your week.”

“Thanks. I think...I wished for Reio to be here,” she says. 

“Oh, fine,” he says. “I'll go away, then. Wish again, why don't you. I'm sure my brother will happily provide.”

“You are pretty alike,” she says. “Maybe I asked for him and confused the gods.”

“You believe in that crap?” Jin says. “Surprising – doesn't seem fitting for somebody serious like you.”

“No,” she says. “I don't. I figured you might, what with your penchant for abstract thought and your scatty musical brain.”

“Nice,” he says, grinning. “So. The big question is: would you rather have Reio here right now?”

“He'd be less creepy,” she says. “But maybe less useful. You look like the kind of guy who can get us out of this mess.”

“Don't be too hopeful,” he says. “I did say that I was disappointing. I could bust us out of here – break some windows, maybe. I bet that'd impress you.”

“Juvenile delinquency always does,” she says. 

“I wish I'd known this was going to happen when I went to sleep,” he says. “I could've been prepared. Brought an axe or something. Then again, where would we go if we got out of here? We'd have to wander around out there. No thanks. Seen too many horror films to chance it.”

She looks at him and then out into the sparse night-time wilderness. “Coward,” she says.

“Disappointing,” he says. “I told you.”

“Have you noticed,” she says. “That we're no longer stopping at any stations? We should still be stopping. I've never been out this far but we've gone past three stations. What's going on?”

He looks at her and then out at the window. Sure enough, the train rolls into one station and out again, just as fast. He turns his gaze to the map on the wall which clearly highlights the station as a designated stop. Taking a breath seems to steal the colour from his face. 

“I don't know,” he says. “I've never been out this far. Shall I try and find an inspector?”

“No,” she says, suddenly. “Don't leave. I think we have to stick together.”

“What do you mean?” he says. “You don't think anything bad's going to happen?”

“I don't know,” she says. “All I know is that you woke up here. That the train is empty – there should be salarymen or somebody else. That the train isn't stopping. That outside...I've never seen the landscape look so bleak. Something isn't right. We've been losing time. Who knows what's going to happen next?”

“Fuck,” he says. “On the bright side, one day I'll write a song about this. It'll immortalize us both.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” she retorts.

“Good,” he says. “Maybe I'm not so disappointing after all.”

 

 

Minutes pass. The flickering lights cast Jin in a strange glow. Close up, his hair is as soft a colour as his eyes but he looks sad. Unworldly. She can't understand that and so she presses it to the back of her mind. She doesn't feel tired or scared. Tiredness usually takes up so much room in her head that it's impossible to think of anything else. Perhaps that's why she has more room for them, the strange things she can't comprehend. Maybe the strange things aren't as frightening as fear itself.

When she looks at him, his eyes are dark and inscrutable. This isn't so for him. He has plenty of room for tiredness and for fear. She suddenly recognises the weight of her own selfishness. A girl who can see other people so clearly but who refuses to do so much to help them.

She reaches over and takes his hand.

“Maybe we should sing,” she says. “It's all so fucking quiet.”

“Can you sing?” he asks. 

“No,” she says. “Not at all. I'll go first – maybe it'll relax you a bit.”

When she sings, her voice is flat and strange and his mouth starts to turn up at the corners. She sings on without self-consciousness, delighting in the reaction, in the simplicity of a smile. And slowly he feels the hard edge of fear leave him. More than anything, he hates the unfamiliar. The strange. The sense of doom, of moving towards inevitability. He didn't ask to be here. He didn't ask to be involved. And since waking up, he's had a sense of heading towards his own death. When Emiko sings, somehow the fear inches away into a corner like a mouse.

“You're right,” he says, as she finishes. “You can't sing worth a damn.”

“Told you,” she says. “Show me how it's done, then.”

When he sings, his voice echoes around the carriage, creeping under the seats and sliding down to touch the train-tracks. She imagines that with a voice like that he could paint them gold. He sings of things he knows, of moments and memories and love, he sings of life. When he sings, it's like being able to see the grass grow, the clouds move, the sun rise. She breathes it in, watching the world make itself anew. 

When she sings with him, he starts to laugh. They don't sound good together but it's not the point.

“I don't think we're a duet in the making,” she says. 

“You don't know that,” he says. “I'm sure there's a gap in the market for a girl who sings like a guy, a guy who sings like a girl.”

“You're being polite,” she says.

“I am,” he says.

“I told you men lie,” she says.

“Fine,” he says. “You sound like a pterodactyl. One with a smoking habit.”

“And you sound like,” she begins. “Fuck, I can't do it. You sound amazing. You know you do.”

“It's different when you're here,” he says. “Can I say that? Does it sound creepy? I've never sung like that before. I've never felt so unlike myself. When you're listening, when you sing with me – it's different. Completely different.”

“A bit creepy,” she says. “But tonight, like this? I get it.”

He's on the floor and she joins him. It means they can't see outside, that the world beyond is lost. They race past stations and they listen to the soothing rhythm of the wheels on the tracks. What you can't see can't hurt you – a childish point of view, it worked with monsters under the bed. Creatures in the wardrobe. She remembers her baby brother covering his eyes when he didn't want other people to see him. That seems a little like what they're doing now. If they sit on the floor, the world outside can't touch them. 

“What are you waiting for?” he asks. It intrigues her that he feels she must be waiting for something. As she considers his question, she realises that he's right.

“For dawn,” she says. “It has to come. When dawn comes, then we'll get off the train and make our way back. That's what's going to happen.”

“Promise me,” he says.

“I promise,” she says. “That's how these things work. Dawn will come.”

“I wrote a song like that, once,” he says. “About sunrises. About mornings.”

“About women,” she says.

“Always about women,” he laughs. “I'm a musical poet. It's what we do.”

She screws up her face. “Poetry,” she says. “It's so considered. You pick the right structure, the right rhyme. You toss around words until you find one that's just right. Why not just be straight, clean, true? Why not just yank it out of your throat?”

“Like a fur-ball?” he laughs. Sometimes people are worth the effort. Sometimes life is worth the effort.”

“I'd rather live it,” she says.

“Writing it is a way of living it,” he says. “Experiencing it. What poets do is give their hearts voices. Where would we be if we all just kept our feelings inside and never talked about them? We wouldn't know about love. It's because of poetry that we understand it – that people have since the dawn of time found people and loved them.”

“I'm not saying we shouldn't talk about love,” she says. “Or that we should keep things inside. Just that poetry isn't your heart's voice. It's your voice. You take what your heart says and make it sound pretty. Not the same thing.”

“So what would your heart say, without you putting your own spin on it?” he asks. “Right now. Tell me what you're feeling, and don't make it sound pretty. Just say it.”

She pauses, for a second. “I am so angry,” she says. “That I live in a world with fucking...these chains on people. Women having to be this, men needing to do that. We all have to look a certain way, think a certain way. We all have to fucking conform or that's it, dismissed. Dismissed from any of the benefits society decides to offer people who conform to it.”

“That sounds pretty to me,” he says.

“It's not pretty,” she says. “Anger isn't pretty.”

“The way you put it was,” he says. 

“I held back,” she shrugs. “If you really want to know what I think – I think life is tiring and I'd rather not fucking bother with it. I'd rather lie flailing like a child or an old woman and just say fuck it. Fuck the whole fucking thing.”

“Okay,” he says. “I'm sorry.”

“It's not a suicidal urge,” she says. “Everybody says I'm depressed. I'm not – I'm reacting to what's around me. This is a depressing time. It's hard to conjure up much to fight that. It's hard to see the world a different way than how it is. I wish I had happiness. I have friends who have happiness. Why not me?”

“Life is going to get better,” he says. “That's how I feel. Money, values – they're just products of transitory movements. They change with decades. Love doesn't. Sex doesn't. Our ability to relate, to touch one another. That's what's important. That's why you bother. That's why life is more than this. Why it's more than just the sum total of its failings.”

“You've loved a lot,” she says. 

“I have,” he says. “I learnt young that it's better to love at every chance you get. Sounds fucking corny, I get it. I just – I'd rather have love than not. Life is depressing. Love is the solution.”

“I bet you've loved a lot of different characters,” she says. “You're the kind of guy who attracts strange women. Like me, I guess.”

“Some pretty awful women,” he says. “I don't have good taste. I'm not talking about you – you don't seem awful at all. Down in the dumps, but I won't hold it against you.”

“Mm,” she says. “Thanks, then. If it helps, I don't have good taste, either.”

“You've dated some awful women?” he says. She looks at him and there's a boyish look in his eyes. Rolling her own, she continues.

“No, I've-”

“Some nice women?” he continues, hopefully. “Perhaps young and nubile ones?”

“No women,” she says. “I don't swing that way. People assume that I hate men but I don't. I've dated a lot of bad men. You name them, I've done them all. I give men more chances than I ever should've.”

“You don't care that I'll judge you,” Jin says. “For saying that. Because you don't care what I think or because you don't care what anybody thinks?”

“I could say things that'd make your hair stand on end,” she says. “Like you – I don't believe in disappointing people. I've tried out a fair few guys. People don't stick. They're not like that. I tried and I've failed. I don't care who knows that – at least I can say that I tried. You've loved a lot, I've tried a lot.”

“What's your type?” he asks. “What's your crappy pattern?”

She sighs. “I don't know,” she says. “I usually went for career guys. For guys who respected me on their level. Guys who worked hard. I work hard. They looked at me as an equal.”

“Men like that don't see you as an equal,” he says.

“Well, it felt like they did,” she says. “Maybe they didn't. Most made me do their shopping. One had a thing about argyle socks.”

“Yeah,” he says. “They see women as secretaries.”

She nods, stretching her feet out in front of her. “I know better now,” she says, not sure whether that's true. “What about your type?”

He stretches his arms above his head. “I've dated all sorts of girls,” he says. “Most of them dumped me because I'm out all night, I sleep half the day. I love music more than them. I love hard but I'm not conventional. I wasn't acceptable for meeting their friends. They didn't like the unpredictability.”

She nods. “Girls don't like men they feel they can't rely on.”

“Weird thing is,” he says. “I loved them more than anybody else could've. They all said as much, after the fact. Girls seem to like love measured out appropriately.”

“Most girls,” she says. “Not all.”

“Not all guys treat women as personal shoppers,” he says. 

“Maybe we're on this train to find the good men and women in the world,” she laughs. “We've been singled out as the hope for the human race. Procreation awaits us.”

“It's a long journey because there aren't many left,” he laughs. “And the ones that are hide in the woods in the night, for fear of being preyed upon.”

“Let me guess,” she says. “You're going to write a song about this.”

“Yep,” he says. “Don't worry. You'll get royalties. I promise.”

 

 

The train rolls on and on and Jin's head is on her shoulder. His hair is soft against her collarbone and she watches the stars dance by. There are no shadows on the floor of the train and she can no longer see the mountains in the distance. She didn't want to say it but this doesn't seem to her as though it can end well. Dawn seems too far away. Checking her watch, she notes that it's already seven in the morning. Dawn is late. More than late. It seems too much to hope for that dawn is just having a lie-in. Beside her, Jin snores on. She crosses her hands in her lap and continues to just hope.

She remembers the ex-boyfriend. The man who would stroke her thigh as though she were a particularly difficult puzzle to crack. She would trap his fingers between her thighs and fix him with a look – he liked being challenged. He liked that she made it difficult for him, that when he eventually won he felt so much bigger a man. She would look at him with her uneven smile and he would lean down onto her, taking her knees and unwinding her. He was good in bed. Not so good after bed. Not so good out of it. Not so good anywhere else.

And the one before him – taller, older, but the same guy. All the same guy. She'd bought into something that didn't exist – a subscription to a way of loving, to a promise. She'd received all the issues and thrown them all away. And now, rolling towards nothingness on a train with a stranger, she realises how much she regrets every moment of it. 

She wipes down her face with one hand and struggles to pull herself together. Thinking of the clips and the photographs she sent to people, the men she blamed for her inadequacy and their injustice. Thinking of the number of times she gave away parts of herself, for money and for status. For what she thought was power. A legacy of fingers trapped between her thighs, of a last-gasp attempt to be stronger and taller and greater than she had any hope to be. 

She's not ready to die. Life may be depressing, life may ask more of her than she can give – but she's not ready to say goodbye. She's not ready to be done, to sign off on a lifetime of bad men and poor choices and to say, 'this was all I could possibly know'. The world is opening up and if she could just get and out of here, she'd lean into it with her arms open, too. 

“Jin,” she says, shaking her shoulder and him awake. “Jin, we have to get off. We're waiting for something that's not coming. We need to get up and leave now. Even if it's still dark. Even if it's still dangerous. We have to do it anyway.”

He looks up and into her eyes. “Are you serious?” he says. 

She looks at him. 

“Stupid question,” he says. He looks out at the deep sky and the stars so far away and so timid, and he takes a deep breath. “Okay,” he says. “Let's do it.”

 

 

When they stand and look outside the train window, Emiko can't help but drop her jaw. The world is completely flat. The mountains and trees that peppered the way before are now gone. All that remains is a vast expanse of dark ground topped with dark sky. No clouds, only stars. Only the train and the earth. She looks at Jin, who says nothing. Who stares and stares and stares.

“Fuck,” he says. “No woods, then. Where do you think we are?”

“I don't know,” she says, taking a step forward towards the door. “How do we get off?”

He shakes his head, following her. She watches him stand behind her, in the mirrored window of the train door. Their eyes meet and he looks petrified. She can feel him shaking. She wonders if he can feel her. 

“Maybe I should just press the button to open the door,” she says. He looks down, closes his eyes. 

“I'll do it,” he says. 

They swap places. She's taller than him but he's stronger and, well. Neither of them know what's going to happen. Outside, the world moves on and on and on, like cassette tape rolling on endlessly through plastic loops. She takes a deep breath and reaches out, taking his free hand. They stand like that for a moment and then he presses the metal button with his unsteady fingertips.

Nothing happens at first but then, ever so slowly, they feel the train grinding to a halt.

“Maybe there was a moment,” Jin says. “Where we should've done that. Maybe we missed it. It's too easy, isn't it?”

“Just take whatever comes,” she says. “It's a better way of looking at this.”

He nods, until the train stops completely. Then, with a whoosh of air, the door opens. Outside, there are no sounds. No wind, no animals, no auditory punctuation. Her ears start to ring with it and she realises at long last how comforting noise is, living in Tokyo. Neither of them want to step out into the darkness but Jin is braver than she is and when he moves forward, she feels her breath catch. 

“It's alright,” he says, planting his foot down on solid ground. “It's alright. It's solid. It's real – as real as this gets.”

He helps her to climb out of the carriage. Around her, the air is cold and the ground is soft. The silence is truly deafening. She clings to his shoulders and when her feet steady themselves, she turns into his body. Together, they watch the doors slide closed.

“Do you think this is it?” she asks, as he wraps an arm around her waist. “We just made a decision that'll change everything?”

“I don't know,” he says. “I still don't understand what's happening. Just take whatever comes.”

“Just take whatever comes,” she repeats.

The train pulls out with a small sigh of exertion and together they watch it leave. As it pulls out, the train tracks stitch together edges of sparse landscape. Like zipping together cloth. All Emiko can see in the distance is the long metal line. Everything else is flat, uninterrupted land. Nothing moves, nothing speaks. She looks up at Jin.

“Well,” she says. “We haven't been eaten yet. That's got to be a good thing.”

He looks around himself and smiles, uneasily. “Here's to that,” he says. “Bet you wish you'd brought something to drink with, so we could drink to our continued survival.”

She laughs and the sound vanishes into the air like dust. “I bet you wish you'd stayed in bed,” she says. 

“Hey,” he says. “What's life without a little adventure?”

“Do you think we should walk?” she asks.

“Yeah,” he says. “I think that sounds like a plan.”

 

 

She almost expects something to happen when they take their first step, the way something happened when they approached the train door. Nothing does and she can't decide whether she's relieved or disappointed. They walk in one direction without much thought given to their destination – neither of them know where they're headed. In the pit of her stomach something tells her that she's not going to survive this but she tries to keep it there. To ward off hunger, to ward off fear. Best to keep things in the stomach, not in the heart.

“We could sing some more,” she says. “If you want.”

“Heh,” he says. “I think somebody would definitely come and attack if you started singing.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she says. “You sing, then.”

“Ah, that'd be selfish,” he says. “You should tell me a secret. Then I'll tell you one. This seems like the kind of place for secrets, don't you think?”

She sees what he means; the world here is naked and exposed for all its truth. There are no trees for prettiness, no people here to convince themselves that life is beautiful. Nothing grows here. Nothing breathes. Everything has abandoned this place, it is so thick with despair. 

“Okay,” she says. “I'll go first.”

“Ladies always should,” he says, amused. 

“When my best friend told me she was getting married,” she says. “I wanted to scream at her for being so stupid. I'm not proud of that. I didn't – I congratulated her. But I think she knew, all the same.”

“Why did you think she was stupid?”

“Because the man – because I don't like him. Because there were stories about him. I don't know – nothing substantial. Nothing I could prove. There's no reason I can use to justify the sense of revulsion that took over me. Like I said, I'm not proud of it.”

“We all do funny things when we're frightened of losing somebody,” Jin says. “Maybe you were right. Maybe he's an idiot. But she'll have to find that out. That's what losing somebody is, I guess.”

“I guess so,” she says. “I'm quite selfish. I always have been.”

“Me too,” Jin says. “I think everybody is. Or can be. We all have dark sides.”

“What's your dark side?”

He thinks about this. “I'm pretty perverted,” he says. “I guess you could say that if this country exploits women then so do I. There's this woman who lives on a street I walk down, returning from the busking the band does at night. She undresses in front of the window and I watch it. I sometimes choose to walk there in the hope of seeing her.”

She nods, slowly. It's hard to bite back the urge to comment but she knows she mustn't. She must listen. For once in her life. This man is all she has – all that connects her to the human race, to her country, to the world. They are all that's left and she's determined to do as Kiko once advised her. To be soft. To forgive. To understand. 

“I think curiosity is natural,” she says. “I think that when a woman who undresses in front of a window understands that. There's little harm to be done in that situation unless you're stopping and staring. I think that constitutes something different.”

“That's where you draw the line?”

“Mm, I suppose so,” she says. “A quick glance is different from a man standing outside, staring. One is biological, one is intimidating. Men have power. There's no getting away from that. If you use that power to frighten then I think you're doing wrong. But a look is something men can't always help.”

“Women do it to men, too,” he says. 

“Oh, yeah,” she says. “That's true. They do. It's human nature to covet what we don't have.”

“I wonder why she undresses in front of the window like that.”

“Women do all sorts of things for validation,” she says. “Comes with not having power. They seek out the notice of those who have it. Sometimes we all get tired of doing that with our voices.”

“You disapprove,” he says. “I shouldn't be surprised.”

“No,” she says. “I don't disapprove. I understand. I pity them. I pity us, women, on the whole. I pity the world, the way it's set up. I don't disapprove – I'm no more above this than you are. Than anybody is.”

“If you were creating the world,” he says. “How would you build it?”

“Not like this,” she says. 

“Me neither,” he says. “Too fucking cold.”

“I wouldn't put women in charge,” she says. “I'd put people in charge. I'd want to tear down the boundaries that we impose through fear. I wish we could see each other, the way we're seeing each other now. Do you think that we all have to come and live here, in the dark, in order to relate to each other? That only when you tear down all the distraction-”

“No,” he says. “I think that you're a very smart girl. And that I'm a very liberal guy. Put us together and we work. It doesn't apply to everybody.”

“Liberal, huh,” she says. “Is that right?”

“Yeah,” he says. “I agree with you. Put people in charge. If women do it better, let them. My mother is a great woman. If she'd been running the country, maybe things would've been different. We cut off our noses to spite out faces. But it doesn't mean all guys lie. That we're all pigs.”

“I'm starting to realise that,” she says. 

“Your turn for a secret, then,” he says.

“Mmn,” she says. “Want to know why I'm so serious?”

“Yes,” he says. 

“My dad wanted a son,” she says. Her voice starts to swell up as she talks, tracing old memories. “They'd given up hope of having kids when they had me. And from the elation of the surprise pregnancy my father felt a kind of crushing defeat. All of this I know because I'm using his words.”

Jin looks at her, his brow furrowed. He says nothing, for which she's grateful.

“And so it was expected that I not exhibit my femininity in an overt way growing up. My mother took pains not to allow me dresses, pink clothing my father would have been disgusted with. I'm grateful for it in a way because it allowed me to approach things without gender clouding the issue. I was encouraged to play boyish sports, to think boyish things. I was given chances I might not have been given, had my mother delighted in my sex.”

He nods, just once. He takes her hand once more.

“I grew up with opinions,” she continues. “Strong and hard, like a man's. I grew up looking in on women the way a man might. I grew up with my father's dismissal, with my father's distance. I think had he been able to marry a man and raise a football team of boys, he would have. My mother wasn't allowed to speak. She wasn't allowed to utter a thought. I grew up knowing it – and not ever wanting to be that way. He wanted a son and I almost got there for him.”

“Fuck,” Jin says, under his breath. 

“I'm not sorry for it,” she adds. “I'm not. It's done damage, sure, but I'm not sorry for my mind. For my beliefs. I'm just sorry that I missed out on all the lessons. How to be soft, how to succumb. I have no idea how to gracefully give in. Even my submission comes with conditions.”

“It's not something that's exclusive to being a woman,” Jin says, after a pause. “Men can be soft. They can succumb and submit. Society doesn't like it when they do but plenty of them can. You think women are the only ones hiding secrets, hiding parts of themselves society doesn't like. Not by a long shot.”

“Oh,” she says, slowly. “Okay. I see that, now. So what are you hiding?”

The sky overheard isn't getting lighter. It feels as though they've walked for miles, for hours and yet nothing has changed. Nothing seems like it will change. When Emiko checks her watch, the time is no longer ticking. The glass front is cracked. The face reads 7.15, the way it did on the train. Perhaps time no longer exists. Perhaps the thing that's been playing tricks on them with time has finally won. Around them, there is nothing. The train tracks are long gone and nothing has surfaced to replace them.

Jin sighs, once, hard. “When I watch that woman undress,” he says. “I'm not thinking about her body. I'm not thinking about wanting to fuck her. Not just that. I'm thinking about how fucking lonely I am. I watch porn and it's about the things I'm losing, every day, because I have nobody who I understand how to touch. I know nobody's body, nobody's heart. I want the feeling of knowing somebody completely and utterly. It's why I watch the same woman, the same porn. I don't want to get physically close – I want to get close, period.”

She squeezes his hand and they walk, not tired, not hungry, not unhappy, into something they don't understand. They walk and walk hoping to find light, hoping to find answers. They walk because there isn't anything to do but curl up on the ground and die. It's hard for Emiko to believe that only a short while ago she was on a train, considering giving up. She can no longer remember well what happened before it – the shape of Kiko's face or the light in her eyes as she announced her impending wedding. The spiral of wedding magazines on the desk. All of it seems like years ago. She knows that the harder she pictures it, the closer she seems to come to it – but the moment she stops thinking, parts of her fade away.

“I've spent my life running away from people,” she says. “And you've spent yours running towards people.”

“And here we are,” Jin laughs. “Together, at the end of the world. Looks like we met in the middle, doesn't it?”

“Do you think we're going to get out?” she asks. 

“What comes after the end of the world?” Jin says. 

“Maybe the start,” she says. “Maybe we go back and start again."


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic was written in 2008 and includes explicit sexual content and disturbing, supernatural content.

Jin's never wanted not to see the sun before. The problem with being exposed to too much of anything is that you eventually get tired of it. You grow weary of things – people, food, love, everything. Beside him, Reio is quiet. With every step they take the less clear things seem. Jin feels as though his brain matter is slowly ebbing away.

“Keep talking,” Reio says, eventually. 

“There's nothing more to talk about,” Jin says. “I can't remember if what I'm saying is true – I can't remember whether any of it is real or not. I feel like things are changing. That in the process of bringing them to mind they're warping. Nothing is solid anymore.”

“You know who Emiko is,” Reio says. “Things like that don't change. They don't – that's static. That's permanent. Memories change but people don't. You still know who she is.”

“She had long hair,” Jin says.

“She has long hair,” Reio corrects him.

“She was tall,” Jin says. “Taller than me.”

“What about her personality?” Reio asks.

Jin is silent, for a few moments. “She was stubborn,” he says. 

“Stubborn,” Reio says. “Okay.”

“The letter she sent me, the one we found - do you want to read it?”

“Okay,” Reio says. “Let me see.”

Jin hands it to him. Reio reads it without much facial expression as he scans the lines. When done, he whistles under his breath.

“Huh,” he says. “That's either selfish or ballsy or both.”

“It was right,” Jin says. “When she told me to turn back, I should've turned back. I should've known she'd be right. No sense in dying for a dying country, adding to the dead weight. I could've had a life with her.”

“She put you above her country,” Reio says.

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I should've done the same.”

“Stubborn,” Reio says. “Was she always that stubborn?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “She wanted to learn, to go to school. Her father said she couldn't. Why would he say she couldn't?”

“Women don't go to school,” Reio says. “Do they? There were hardly any at our school. Her father probably wants what's best for her – women need to learn other things, not like men. It wouldn't do her any good to learn science when she really needs to know how to cook, to clean, to raise children.”

“It's wrong,” Jin says. “It's all wrong. We're expected to know one thing, women another. We carve out little segments of life and exclude each other from them.”

“Do you want a woman's role?” Reio scoffs. “Who the hell wants that role?”

“She wanted to go to school,” Jin continues. “If I can go to school then why not her? That's the problem. We only educate certain people. We only promote certain people. Japan's finest are all men and Japan's finest props get no credit.”

“Is this Emiko talking or you?” Reio asks. “Maybe I should've asked you to tell me about somebody else. Ryo, maybe.”

“I think Ryo's dead,” Jin says, quietly. “He didn't turn around. I wasn't followed out of there. We talked about it but I was never sure whether he'd go through with it or not. Looks like he gave in.”

“He had nothing to live for?” 

“He had a girl,” Jin says. “I can't remember her name. He had a girl and he didn't chase her. He gave up on her. She's engaged to another man.”

Reio thinks on this. “Hey,” he says. “I'm dead and you're talking to me. Death is a pretty weird concept to me right now. You can't assume anything.”

“What if you're not dead?” Jin asks. “Maybe neither of us are dead. We're just in the middle-ground. In the between. Maybe when this is all over, we'll get to go back. When the grass grows again, when the wind blows, when the birds sing.”

“I don't think that's going to happen here,” Reio says. “The world is flat, the ground is dry. There aren't any mountains to catch and keep a wind and there are no clouds to make it rain. Nothing is going to grow here. There aren't any animals. We're the only people.”

“You think nothing's ever going to grow?” Jin says. “Never? That...fuck. If we can't get out of here, then there's nothing left for us. We can't go back, we can't move on. Where are we going, what are we looking for?”

“Stop freaking out,” Reio says. “I've been here months. You think I don't know all this? I believe in things being meant to be. I've been here and had no luck finding anything, until you turned up. Which makes me think maybe I'm here _because_ you need me. Maybe the reason I've never found anything is because I was waiting for you. And now that you're here, we're going to find whatever it is we need to find.”

“I wish we knew what we had to find, that's all,” Jin says. 

“Me too,” Reio says. “But we don't.”

“So we have to work with what we do have,” Jin says.

“Which is what?” Reio asks.

“Stubborn pride,” Jin says.

\---

“Where do you think we're supposed to go?” Emiko asks. They've been walking for longer that she can quantify and Jin's face is solid and forlorn. They've both run out of ideas and the novelty of their adventure is wearing thin. “What do you think we're supposed to be looking for?”

“God knows,” Jin says. “I wish it would get light, that's for sure. If it got light we'd be able to see where we're headed. We'd know more.”

“I don't think there's anything to see,” Emiko says. “I think we're heading in the right direction. I have a feeling that things are going to be alright. I can't explain it, it's just a sense of...purpose. I feel like I've spent such a long time drifting that being here with you isn't scary. I'm scared of what's around me but there's nobody else I'd rather be with.”

“Me too,” Jin says. “It's weird – we don't even know each other.”

“I've told you more than most people know about me, period,” she says. “Even my mother.”

“Fuck,” he says. “That's a whole lot of trust. I thought you said you didn't trust people?”

“I didn't say it,” she says. “But it's true, moreorless. I don't trust most people. For some reason, you're different. You and Reio, you both felt different. Like there was already a connection. I didn't have to try and be anything but myself with you.”

“What's your greatest ambition?” Jin asks, suddenly. His hand is warm around hers, a little ball of sunlight between them as they walk forward through the night. “What do you want to do before you die?”

She likes that he's still using present tense. 

“Mm,” she says. “I was trying to set up a debating society. In Tokyo. For women – unisex ones exist but the men overpower the women and, well. I thought if I populated a society with women then men would be less keen to join.”

“Some men would be moreso,” Jin says, with a laugh.

“True,” she says. “But those types would be too distracted to debate. They'd get marginalized quickly.”

“Hm,” he says. “You really are on a crusade for women.”

“I am,” she says. “I think we're an incredible species. All of us, not just the men. We should be celebrating our existence, not withholding rights, power, _things_ from one another. When I think about what a glorious thing it is, that we just _exist_ , that somehow the cosmos swirled itself together and brought us into being – isn't it sad that now all we do is squabble? What a waste of potential.”

“It is sad,” he says. “But it makes me happy to hear it from somebody who wanted to give up on life not so long ago.”

“Being out here clarifies things,” she says. “Take the world away and somehow, I see it. I understand it. Isn't that strange?”

“No,” he says. “I agree. Take everything away and you'd expect me to be miserable. I'm not. I'm here with you and I'm content. I don't know much about you but I know that being here – that being here now, talking to you, I'm happy. I don't need anything else the world could provide. And that's incredible to me.”

“We probably shouldn't talk like this,” she says.

“Why?” Jin says. “Because it's inappropriate? Too forward?”

“No,” she says. “Because soon enough, we'll talk each other out of going back home.”

“I almost don't know why it'd be so bad if we didn't go home,” he says. “You know? I know we can't stay but imagine if we could – this place, it doesn't have cruelty. It doesn't have noise. It has space and quiet and it's beautiful, in its own way. Isn't it?”

“It doesn't have music,” she says. “It doesn't have hearts, it doesn't have love.”

“It has us,” he says. “Isn't that enough?”

She looks at him as their hands break apart. She tilts her chin downwards and admonishes him with her gaze. They keep walking. He buries his hands in his pockets and looks up at the dark sky.

“Alright,” he says. “It's not. I know it's not. I just – I've never felt this content. I'm not used to it. I can't – I don't want to lose you.”

“You're not losing me,” she says.

“You don't know that,” he says. “What if, at the end of all this, you have to choose between life back home and life here with me?”

“Why would you want to stay here?” she asks. “When you could go home?”

“I've tried to escape so many things before,” he says. “Here, I don't have to face any of them. We don't have to face the financial meltdown or the loneliness or our lack of purpose. Japan's crazy rat-race. I could just sit and play my guitar.”

“You'd get lonely,” she says. “And feel completely purposeless.”

“Eh,” he says. “I wouldn't be poor.”

“You wouldn't feel anything,” she says. “You don't feel tired or hungry here, have you noticed? It's not normal. I don't want to stay here. We're not going to stay here. We're going to find out way out and then we're going home.”

“Promise me,” he says.

“Yes,” she says. “Now pull yourself together.”

“Yes ma'am,” he says.

\---

“Tell me your strongest memory,” Reio says. “Of Emiko. We're here to get you back home. That's how we do it – we keep the thought strong in your head. You used to write her poetry. Read me your poetry. I'll even pretend to appreciate it.”

“I wish it was dark,” Jin says. “I could follow the stars – I know the stars. I wanted to be an astronaut. What happened to that? What happened to our dreams, Reio?”

“Jin,” Reio says. “Concentrate.”

“I could navigate if it were night,” he says.

“Stars wouldn't help you,” Reio says, tonelessly. “This place isn't logical. It's not like earth. It's not Japan. You're not here on a geography field trip, fuck. You won't find Emiko using the stars. You have to use your own head. Bring her to mind. Your strongest memory of her, go.”

Jin pauses. “I feel like all the memories have been hosed down with water,” he says. “I feel like everything is duller and diluted.”

“Try,” Reio says. 

“The wedding,” Jin manages, eventually. “We got married in Okinawa. Seems crazy that I ended up defending it – failing to defend it. It was May or so. Not that warm yet. The sun came out at intervals. It was a simple ceremony because of us being dirt poor and not wanting it to be brash. Nobody wants to be boastful during war, it doesn't make sense.”

“What were you wearing?” Reio asks. “I can't see you in traditional dress. I just can't.”

“People still did go for tradition,” Jin says. “Plenty of guys I flew with had had ceremonies that were proper. No, we didn't. Emiko in tsuno kakushi? To hide her fucking horns, to symbolise her obedience to me? That was never going to happen. I'm glad she didn't – she didn't obey me after the wedding and had I obeyed her, I wouldn't be in this mess. I should have sworn my obedience to her, not the other way around. She wore a kimono and her hair tied up and it was beautiful.”

“What colour was the kimono?”

“Blue,” Jin says. “It was her mother's. It was the colour of the sky with white flowers. Pale white flowers. We spent time in the flower fields and they reminded me of it – the blue sky, the flowers and her skin.”

“This was after the wedding?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Everything is a series of loose images to me. I see a kimono and then I see the flower fields. They gave us cornflowers to toss over the sides of the planes as we flew past Kikajima. I wonder if she would've seen them falling to earth and known it was me. Maybe. I wonder if she ever got half my letters.”

“You said that Father smiled,” Reio says. “During the ceremony.”

“He did,” Jin says. “He liked her, Emiko. I think mother might've been...I don't know. I think our mother might have been like her. He knew how to handle Emiko and he never fought against the things that she wanted. Like a non-traditional ceremony. If I'd have suggested she not wear the wedding hood he'd have argued with me – but Emiko's suggestion was fine by him.”

“I don't remember our mother at all,” Reio says. “But I like to think that she was strong.”

“Me too,” Jin says. 

“Is that the strongest memory?” Reio asks. “Of Emiko?”

“One of,” Jin says. “The strongest is the wedding night. And I don't want to tell you about that in detail – you're still a kid.”

Reio laughs. “I'm less of a kid than you think,” he says. “I went to bars, Jin. Servicemen went to bars. I've seen things even you haven't seen, I'm willing to bet.”

Jin looks at him. “I don't want to think about you screwing girls, not at your age.”

Reio just grins.

“Fuck,” Jin says. “I don't want to know that.”

“Tell me about the wedding night,” Reio says. “I'm dead, anyway. You'll get out of here and you won't have to face me. You won't even have to remember that you told me terrible things.”

“I think you're just being perverted,” Jin says. “You don't care about me finding Emiko, you just want to live vicariously through me.”

“Maybe,” Reio says. “I'm willing to concede that.”

“Ryo used to do that,” Jin says. “Not you. You never would've wanted to know.”

“Maybe things change,” Reio says. “Maybe they change too much.”

 

 

He carries her into their room. Some of the films he's seen depict man and woman in this ridiculous embrace and Emiko laughs full and loud when he does it. It never occurs to him at the time, the irony of imitating American bravado. Only months later the Americans will take the land he stands on. At the time, all Jin can think about is Emiko in his arms. She wears a thin silk robe he can feel the heat of her skin through. Her hair spindles down beyond her body, like a creature in a fairy story.

He lies her down on the bed. She lies quite still with her robe loosened, just looking at him. Just fixing him to the ground with her stare. Her face speaks of confrontation and challenge and looking back at her, Jin wonders how he'll ever leave her, if his pilot training comes off. Wonders how he'll ever be able to love her less, so that he can breathe. So that he can think. Or whether it'll always be this way, trying to squash in life beside his love for her.

“You're being poetic,” she says. “I can hear you inside your head.”

He laughs. “Yeah,” he says. “I was thinking, when will I be able to breathe again? When will space clear up so I can think about something other than you, other than the crazy feelings I have for you?”

She just looks at him. “You're very silly,” she says. 

“I know,” he says. “You want me to get on with it.”

She laughs. “You know what I want?” she says. “I want to see what you can do. I know what to do with me – do you? Maybe it's your turn to watch and learn.”

He grins at her. “A girl once told me that that's the best way to progress,” he says. “That sometimes, if we do it, we can develop new ways of thinking. Challenge the old ways. Be better than the old ways.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Smart girl,” she says.

“Yeah,” Jin says. “She is.”

He leans down onto the bed and her body moves up a little to meet his. He kisses her mouth fully clothed and through his shirt he feels the silk fall away. Her skin is so hot beneath the cotton of his clothes and when he flicks his eyes downwards he has to breathe in so hard. 

She doesn't need to ask him to touch her. He starts with her hair, as if brushing with his fingers. He strokes her chin and the spot she loves, just behind her ear. He strokes that until she sinks into the bed, her eyes lidded. He strokes the underneath of her skull and her neck, her shoulders, down her back. Up and around – her collarbone, teasing down to her breasts. She rises up, again, so that the mere touch he started with becomes a grab and he grunts. She too, as his fingers meet the hard press of nipples.

“Fuck,” he says. “Fuck.”

“Is this the first time you've-”

“No,” he says, embarrassed that she got that impression. “Don't say anything. Just-”

“I'm not,” she says, and she isn't. 

“Okay,” he says, and then leans his mouth down to her nipples. A groan escapes her mouth, then, and she presses forward and forward and forward, taking his hair between her fingers. His free hand strokes down her stomach, between her thighs, where the skin gets warmer and warmer. She shifts slightly with gunfire breathing until her thighs slowly part and everything becomes as hot as hell. He sinks his hand between her legs, where it's wet, where it's hot and wet and delicious and where she begins to rock against him, making noises he's never heard in his life before.

She isn't loud but she is determined. The noises aren't what he expected – they're not feminine or pretty. They're just honest and guttural and true and he can't get enough of them. He waits, suckling, until she's pushing up so hard against him that his fingers hurt. And then when she begs he moves between her legs and guides himself into her – his thumb where she likes it, rubbing in hard circles. As he pushes inside, slow and tantalizing and torturous, she begins to beat hard circles around him. He looks down and her eyes are dark and her body is shaking water onto the sheets.

 

 

“You were a bit of a genius,” Reio says. “I couldn't get that to happen for me.”

“I shouldn't have told you,” Jin says. “You're going to mock. If you get out of here, you can't tell her I told you.”

“I won't,” Reio says. “But fuck, man. I just couldn't get a girl to-”

“She just knew what she wanted,” Jin says. “She always did. She knew she wanted to marry me before I knew I wanted to marry her. She knew when to get married, she knew what kind of ceremony. Where to go afterwards. She knew more about sex than I did.”

“They say women are uneducated,” Reio says. “I'm not sure.”

“They know more than men do,” Jin says. “Uneducated or not. I don't know how she knew so much. She knew how she liked to be touched. She had a vociferous appetite for being touched. For everything, really. She knew what to do when I was flying, when I was questioning myself. She knew that I shouldn't have done it. She told me to turn back.”

“Well,” Reio says. “If you have faith in her, and I have faith in her, she'll lead us the right way. We went the right way, going North. Don't you think?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I think we made the right choice. I think it's what she would've done. She never was afraid to turn back, to go back, if it was the right choice. She was never afraid to make a mistake. That's how you learn, Jin, she'd say. Or maybe that was mother...”

\---

Jin looks at Emiko as they walk along. There's something about her that seems familiar, beyond the strangeness of their current predicament. There's something else, has been for a while. 

“Do you think we knew each other in a past life?” he laughs. “It would explain why we're so comfortable with each other.”

She looks at him. “I don't believe in all that,” she says. “Come on, science tells us that's unlikely at best. It's not logical for people to retain their souls, come back to earth to live again. What a waste of energy and time – it'd be cheaper just to let humans breed, just to populate the earth that way. Where would you store all the people who wanted to come back, while they made up their minds?”

“You're ruining the fun of the idea,” Jin says. “Just so you know.”

She laughs. “I'm sorry,” she says. “Are you harboring ideas of being Julius Caesar?”

“Maybe I was,” he says. “I could've been some great hero and I'll never know because of skeptics like you. I think you must have been some sort of pessimist in a past life. You would have rejected everything with your cross little mouth.”

“I do not have a cross little mouth,” she says. “Anyway, I'd prefer to be a cynic than somebody who believes everything they hear.”

“I'd prefer to be gullible,” Jin says. “I mean – before today, would you have ever believed in something like this? A world like this?”

“No,” she says.

“Then there you go – it exists and yet you wouldn't have believed it. What else could exist that you don't know about right now?”

She looks at him. “Don't you have an off button?”

“I don't know,” he says. “I've never found one but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”

She glares at him and they walk in silence for some time. She's become used to the fact that nothing changes in the endless spread of dark quiet before her. It no longer frightens her but she knows that when they do get out it'll be like walking out of a dark cinema back into the light. 

“If I were reincarnated,” she says. “I'd want to have been a strong woman in a past life.”

“I think you're a strong woman now,” he says. “In a past life, you should've been different. A meek woman or something. A cowardly one.”

“Hm,” she says. “You think when you return you have to be the opposite of what you were before?”

“Maybe,” he says. “It'd explain why in a past life I might've been a hero. Now I'm just...”

“You're heroic enough for me,” she says, gently. “You got off the train. You didn't want to do that and you did. You were here for me when I needed you.”

“You asked for Reio,” he says. 

“I knew him better then,” she says. “Than I knew you. When you came...I'm glad it was you. I don't want anybody else. Nobody is a bigger hero than you, right now, to me.”

He grins. “Thanks,” he says. “I wish I could get us out of here. I wish I could read the stars. Maybe if I could I could navigate, get us somewhere.”

“I don't know how to do it, either,” she says. “I should've known. In the old days, they would have known. Now, it's like we only know how to cope with technology. Not the natural world. Isn't that funny?”

“We deal with what's around us,” Jin says. “Whether that's technology or nature. In the old days, they didn't have Gameboys. If they had, well, we wouldn't be as advanced as we are. People would've got distracted and stopped evolving.”

“And I'm the pessimist?”

“Hey,” Jin says. “I say that as somebody who really likes Gameboys. Maybe I wouldn't have been bothered about evolution, as long as I had a good game to play.”

She looks at him.

“Ah, alright,” he says. “Look, we'll try. The stars, look at the stars. Recognise anything?”

They look up as they keep walking, into the blanket of the sky. The stars blink back down, almost accusingly.

“They all look the same,” she says, after a pause.

“No constellations,” he says, blinking. “Okay. That doesn't make sense.”

“As opposed to everything else, which is so logical,” she laughs. “Okay, so maybe we're not supposed to use the stars.”

“What are we supposed to use,” Jin muses. “There must be _something_ we're missing.”

“I think we're supposed to just keep going,” she says. “I don't think there are any answers. I mean, look at everything around us. There's nothing. I think we just have to persevere. Like a rat race. At least it's cool. If it were day and it were hot, that'd be awful.”

“Okay,” he says. “I can do that. If we keep talking. Tell me about the time we met. In the park, when you looked at me. Did you lose time there? I lost time there.”

“I did,” she says. “It was strange. Our entire history has been strange, hasn't it? We've only known each other for a few hours and yet we've had all this weirdness. And now we're here. Somebody's got it in for us.”

“Did you like the song?” he laughs. She looks at him, surprised – to go from talking about existential matter to the simplicity of a song has startled her.

“I've an ego problem,” he explains. “You'll have to put up with it.”

“It was alright,” she teases. “I guess.”

“Oh, you guess, fine,” he says. “I won't sing any more for you then.”

She smiles. “It was beautiful and you know it,” she says. “I've never...music has never done that to me before. When I heard it I had images of things, all sorts of things. You made me see planes and the sky and things that felt so strong they were almost like memories. I didn't know that music could do that.”

He grins, a mile wide. “Music has only ever done that for me before,” he says. “I've never known anybody else who's felt that way. Most people, music is just...it's pretty, in the background, it doesn't pull the heartstrings too much. It's always made me think of things, made images come to life for me. I'm really glad I was able to do that for you.”

“You seem really committed,” she says. “And you guys are good. Ryo seems a bit scary, but-”

“Ah, he just looks it,” he says. “Music is a big deal to him, too. Probably to us both more than the rest of the band. It's funny, though, he doesn't get this way about music – he doesn't see images. He writes songs, like me, but he doesn't...music is more abstract to him. It's a construct, it's a form of expression for him. It isn't nostalgic. For me, it's about mood. Not so much me telling a girl how I feel but talking about the experience of being in love. Generally, you know.”

“Mm,” she says. “It's not my thing, poetry. I mean, music is a form of poetry, I think. Or good songwriting is, anyway. I think I prefer truth.”

“Music is truth,” he says. “It's no less true than fucking, I think. Love and sex, both of them can be pretty loose and grotesque, awkward. But we romanticize both because we want it all to mean something. It's important to us as human beings.”

“I guess so,” she says. “I think sometimes we get them confused, too.”

“Probably,” he says. “Ryo doesn't believe in love. He believes in need and in giving and taking, in compromise, but he says that love is just something we've learnt to fake to make our time here seem useful.”

“That's pretty bleak,” she says.

“He is pretty bleak,” Jin says. “I don't know why. He just seems to think that love is too convenient. We get put on earth and we scurry around for a while, working and struggling to pay the bills. And it's so plainly unpleasant that we choose somebody and love them to make time go by quicker.”

“What about people who enjoy their lives?”

“I guess he'd say they're single,” Jin laughs. “He got cut up by a girl pretty bad. Now he just cheats. It's a pretty sad state of affairs.”

“You can go off love pretty quick when it burns you,” she says. “It's hard to keep being an optimist. Like a war wound – if somebody shoots your leg off you stop wanting to go into battle. There's nothing worth fighting for. And even if you did, you'd struggle to fight off-balance. It just seems easier not to bother.”

“You sound like him, now,” he says. 

“I believe in love,” she says. “But I think we force it. It is too convenient – there's not somebody out there for everyone. Most of us compromise ourselves to find somebody to fit with. All these special, unique individuals cut off bits of themselves in order to be accepted by another person. As individuals, we're so strange on our own that we're not going to fit exactly as a pair. The idea of soulmates is kind of laughable.”

“What about people who accept strangeness?” he asks. “I accept people as they are.”

“Lots of people think they do but I don't know,” she says. “People have a limit to what they're able to accept. They think they'll accept a person just as they are but soon enough, they're making changes. People don't like change and when they see it, they mould it to better fit their perception of things. Relationships are full of compromise. We weren't put here to fall in love – we were put here to fuck.”

“I'm pretty accepting,” he says. “I've accepted a lot of things in people. I've dated a lot of strange girls. I like strangeness – makes me feel I'm not alone. It's girls that try to change me.”

“Girls are particularly bad at accepting change,” she concedes. “We're brought up on fairytales. One true prince, that kind of thing. I used to believe in being swept off my feet by a knight.”

“I used to believe in saving girls from dragons or from high towers,” he laughs. “Only when you grow up, all the girls want to save themselves. It's a tough world.”

“Ah,” she says. “Girls want to save themselves but sometimes, dragons need to be fought in pairs. Fighting a dragon all by yourself is lonely, is difficult. It's convenience, again. If you have dragons in your life, best find somebody to help you slay them.”

“Is that true for you?”

“Do I have dragons? Sure. Everybody does, I guess. I've been fighting them all my life.”

“Don't you want somebody to help you?”

She thinks about this. 

“It's not a weakness,” he says. “To admit that you need help. You just said girls want to be independent but they need somebody, that everybody needs somebody at some point.”

“It's hard for me to admit to it,” she says. “I want to be strong, so strong. I don't want to need anybody. To rely on anybody. To owe anybody. I want to have my own power, to wield my own sword. I'm scared of being manipulated.”

“You've been out with some bad dragon slayers,” he says. “Who abandoned you, let you get eaten.”

She laughs. “Oh yeah,” she says. “Haven't we all?”

“Yeah,” he says. “But we're not all like that.”

“I know,” she says. “I just. I don't want to be saved. I don't want a knight anymore. I want somebody who'll keep me company. Who I can talk to, who respects me. Not a knight, more a friend.”

“A friend,” he says. “Okay.”

“Girls don't want to know you're trying to save them,” she says. “Is I guess what I'm saying. They just want to know that you're there.”

“Hey,” he says. “Look at us right here. You're the one pulling me together. I wouldn't dare try to save you from anything. If a dragon appears, I'm pushing you forward.”

“Deal,” she says. “You've got a deal.”

\---

Jin and Reio start to make up stories about their mother. The insanity of it increases as Reio gets more and more involved – his imagination was always stranger than Jin's and, well. He has no memory of his mother at all. His attachment is basic and it allows him creative freedom. For Jin there are the odd echoes of feeling, of memory, that he can't quite shake. The older he gets, the more he wishes he'd known her. 

Reio is laughing so hard he can't walk and Jin wants the moment to go on forever, to always be with his brother. He's leaning on Jin and Jin laughs too, trying to support him, keep him upright. He cherishes these moments, knowing that soon enough they too may be committed to his memory. Losing Reio so suddenly was a shock. To know that he may feel it again is heartbreaking.

Before long, a dot appears on the horizon.

“Fuck,” Jin says. “There's something there, look. Can you see it?”

“Maybe it's our mother,” Reio laughs. “She's dead, too – maybe she's here. I'd like to talk to her.”

“Me too,” Jin says. “But it's too small to be our mother. Look, it's – fuck, it's paper. It's more paper. A letter?”

They rush over to the spot and Jin feels heat on his back for the first time in what feels like days. There's no warmth here, no sun, but his body responds to the day as if the weather is normal. He doesn't get that but he's realised that here, he doesn't have to understand anything. Understanding doesn't change it. When they arrive at the spot Jin knows that he can't stop, so he quickly ducks down and picks up the white piece of paper. It's half-buried in the ground so as he leans down, his ankles are pulled, a sudden jerk that frightens him. Reio is close behind and grabs his shoulders, for which he's grateful.

The paper in his hand, they keep walking.

“What do you think would happen if we allowed ourselves to sink down?” Jin asks. 

“I don't know,” Reio says. “Wouldn't like to try it. I think it's what happens when you give up. It stopped when we found Emiko's letter and started again when we headed North. It's to stop you from stopping. At least this way we're progressing, you know? When you stop wanting to progress, you just...drown.”

“Mm,” Jin says. “You could be onto something.”

He unfolds the paper and scans it. It is another letter, but not from Emiko. Not to him, either. It's a letter he doesn't recognise. 

“What is it?” Reio asks. 

“To Ami,” Jin reads. Slowly, things begin to dawn on him. First, it's a tickle in his brain. Then, lights start to shoot across his eyelids and it's as though his synapses are on fire.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says. “It's a letter. From Ryo, to Ami. That was the girl. The girl he was in love with. She was engaged to somebody else and he signed up for her, hoping she'd see him as a hero. We lay in bunks and he was beneath me and we talked about love and sex and we talked in the hangers about not doing this. He had dark hair and he was short and he called Emiko a smart girl – the way I called her a smart girl. _Fuck_ , Reio, what is this life? What is this – why do these things go away, how do they come back?”

He's aware that he's babbling but he can't stop.

“He was beaten, they beat him, the superiors – they tried to teach him a lesson because once he turned around and came back. It was the wrong thing to do to turn around and come back, to be a coward, so they beat sense into him. And I did the same, I turned the plane around and came back. And now we're turning around and coming back. And maybe we're being beaten too, for this – for being a coward. I'm going to walk here forever because I'm a coward.”

Reio looks slightly startled when he stops talking. Jin closes his eyes and breathes, hard.

“Read the letter,” Reio says. “It was left there for a reason.”

“Okay,” Jin says. “Okay. Sorry. I-”

“It's okay,” Reio says. “I think remembering is good.”

“To Ami,” Jin says. “This is a dream I can't wake up from. Since I met you all I've done is dream. At first, this was fine – I dreamt of good things. I dreamt of you. And I couldn't have you so dreaming of you was okay by me. I took what I could get. We met and we fucked and maybe I dreamt that too. I think the entire time I've known you, I've been dreaming.

Now I can't wake up. Dreaming of you led me here and I've lost the ability to pinch myself, to push myself out of here. I'm stuck. I'm stuck with dreaming. Reality just went away. I want you to be here with me. In my dream, in my life, whichever. I no longer care which it is. If you have a heart left that feels anything for me, wake me up. Please. Promise me that if I can dream myself back to you, you'll stay with me. 

Today they beat me. I keep coming back for you, trying to wake up. Trying to get out of this. They slammed something into my face and they cried, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

I can't wake up until I'm with you. Write to me and tell me you want me with you. 

If not – well. Know that dreaming got me this far. Know that I'll go into a field of dreams, and it won't hurt a bit. Know that I'll be waiting for you in whatever comes next. In case you change your mind.

Please change your mind.

Ryo.”

“He sounds like he was a crazy guy,” Reio says.

“He was, a bit,” Jin muses. “He didn't know how to write poetry, so he just wrote about his feelings. I don't know what he meant by this. Maybe Ami didn't, either. I don't know that he even sent it – he always told me that they just wrote sexy things to each other.”

“I think she'd have been scared to death by this,” Reio says. “I would've been. Maybe he didn't send it.”

“Mm,” Jin says. “Probably. I think his intensity scared a lot of people. He always pretended to be nonchalant but he wasn't. I knew that he wasn't. Anybody with the balls to turn around-”

“More to the point,” Reio says. “Why is it here? The letter – why is it here?”

Jin muses on that. He can't push the thought out of his head that Ryo must have died. He would have turned around with Jin had Ami wrote back, had she agreed to save him. And if he never sent the letter in the first place, why didn't he tell Jin that he'd decided to die? It would have been the kind thing to do. He wonders whether Ryo is happy now, wherever he is. Whether it was hard, in the end, to give up. Jin's heart aches for him. He can't imagine leaving Emiko behind. He hopes that at the end of this, he won't have to make the same decision.

“I don't know,” he says. “I really don't know.”

“There's gotta be a reason,” Reio says. “It's a sign. We found Emiko's letter, which told you to turn back. So we turned back. And now we've found another letter, which proves that we made the right decision.”

“We don't know that,” Jin says. “We don't even know that much. Had we continued walking on, there might've been another letter, telling us something else.”

“So what does this tell us?” Reio asks. “If we can decipher this, we'll know whether it says we were right. We'll know whether we made the right turning.”

Jin looks at the letter. “It's about dreaming,” he says. “Ryo wanted her to know that she gave him dreams. That falling in love is like falling asleep, only he...was sleepwalking. And he ended up walking into a nightmare.”

“In order to make her love him back?”

Jin shrugs. “She was engaged,” he says. “They were having an affair. He thought if he were a hero she'd fall in love with him.”

“Okay,” Reio says. “So he walked into a nightmare and he couldn't wake up.”

“And he wanted her to know that she could wake him up, by promising to be with him,” Jin says. “That he'd walk through the nightmare if she'd say that. That if she could promise him, he'd dream his way back to her and they'd wake up together.”

“So he wanted to wake up,” Reio says.

“He wanted to wake up, but not there,” Jin says. “They beat him half to bits. He didn't want to live with that reality. Not the reality of impending death. He wanted to wake up with her. And she couldn't promise him anything, so he chose to stay asleep. To go into...a field of dreams.”

“She alone had the power to wake him,” Reio says. “Fuck, it's like Sleeping Beauty. Only twisted.”

“He was twisted,” Jin says. “He said that war made you generous in looking at girls. Only I think what he meant was that it made you look at girls with stupid eyes. He did stupid things for a girl who didn't love him. Because he was afraid. War turns men into little boys.”

“He died for somebody who didn't love him enough,” Reio says. 

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I miss him. I really miss him.”

“I'm sorry,” Reio says. “But this letter – it means something.”

“It means something,” Jin says, dully. Then, a lightbulb. 

“Reio,” he says, urgently, grabbing his sleeve. He almost stops but Reio's motion pulls him on.

“What?” Reio asks.

“This is the field of dreams,” Jin says, his voice dark and low. “This is the field Ryo was talking about. That's why we found the letter. This world – somebody wants us to know that this is the field of dreams. Right here.”

“So we need to wake up,” Reio says. “You need to wake up. She needs to help you wake up?”

“Does that mean Ryo could still be alive?” 

“I don't know,” Reio says. “But you need to stop dreaming. That's how you get out of here.”

“How do I wake up?” Jin asks. “Fuck, how do I wake up?”

“That's what Ryo wanted from Ami,” Reio says. “We need to find her reply. She must have replied – that's why the letter is here. Come on. We need to speed up.”

\---

“Isn't it weird that we don't get tired?” Jin says. “I could just walk here forever. I like walking, but not this much.”

“I feel uneasy,” Emiko says. “Not as though there are dragons ahead, but...uneasy. I'd just stopped feeling that way and now it's back.”

“Like nausea,” Jin says.

“Mm,” she says. “We haven't found anything. That's what it is. We've just walked and walked and seen nothing different in the landscape. We could be going around in circles. How do we know we're not going around in circles?”

“We don't,” Jin says. “It's just faith, isn't it. I'm not religious, but it's about faith. And hell, what else can we do? If we stop, we sink in this ground. Not much of a choice.”

She nods and gnaws on her lip. Reaching out her hand, she grabs his own. “Sing for me,” she says. “Anything. I don't care what. It'll make me feel better.”

“I've been working on a song recently,” he says. “In my head. Started when I saw you the first time.”

“How romantic,” she laughs.

“It's a good song,” he says. “I'll sing it for you.”

“Thanks,” she says. “I'd like that.”

“What colour will the new world turn to, under the sun that we're wishing for?  
Despite the guilt I want us to be wrapped up the way we were that day  
How many times have I dreamt this dream? I thought I heard you calling to wake me up  
Before I knew it I'd dreamt too far, into a time that can't return  
That distant light still shines on us both, we can't seem to say goodbye  
I think of excuses with you beside me saying sadly, 'don't leave'  
The large maze turns onwards and sways my emotions  
I pass by the crowds and I look beyond, I'll say it again and again  
We were there, walking in the time that can't return  
There are words I cannot say so I swallow them – it makes my heart ache  
But in aching it shines all the more  
Without knowing love, we were cut off  
I'll say it again and again  
We were there, in the time that can't return  
A faded page, light of that beloved day - we cannot say goodbye.”

She pauses to consider this, nodding. “It's poetry,” she says. “It's beautiful poetry.”

“Hm,” he says, laughing. “Is it too carefully considered?”

“A bit,” she smiles. “It's very nice, though.”

“It fits our current situation, I think,” he says. “Maybe I am a bit psychic, after all.”

“Well, yes,” she says. “Only you made it sound a lot more poignant than it is! It's not a faded page and there are no lights – it's all darkness.”

“You make it light here,” he says. “Even though there's no light. I'd rather have you than the sun. I'm not just saying that.”

She looks across at him and the smile widens. He smiles back, his eyes sheepish, growing confident with her looking at him. He's beautiful. She's aware of it but each look clarifies it. The hard line of his nose and the warmth of his eyes. The way he doesn't have expectations, the way he accepts things as he sees them. The way he turns dragons into butterflies.

“What's the song called?” she asks. 

“Southend,” he says, without thinking about it. He'd never titled it until that moment. And then- 

Things move in a rush, all without warning. It's all she can do to keep hold of his hands. Images flood through her eyes so fast it's like opening them in a waterfall. It hurts and she opens her mouth to cry out but no sound emerges. She can no longer see Jin. All she can see is little capsules of memory – the website, the strange things she did in the dark. The desperation not to slide in the rankings, not to go to _Southend_ , not to be one of the girls who'd sold everything for absolutely nothing. And beyond that, little curls of light bursting in her pupils – Southend, Southend, Southend, it means something. A word on the ground, a thought in her mind.

_Turn back, turn back, turn back._

She can't turn back. Turning back isn't the answer. She knows that it isn't but why is the thought in her head? She can feel Jin squeezing her hand and when she reaches out for something with her other hand, she can feel silk on her skin. Her hair down her back. Tears in her eyes and letters in her hand. Okinawa. A wedding, a marriage, a love so great it kicked her heart black and blue. A love with boots that pushed open spaces inside her until she couldn't breathe for the kicking. And death. So much death.

Planes overhead. The roar of her soul and the scream of engines. Flowers falling to earth.

_Sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep._

She's not asleep. This isn't a dream. This is the music and the words are rummaging around down inside her. With electricity running down her back she touches the images. Reaching down into herself, she can feel her wet thighs and Jin above her, his hair longer and his face more worn but still the same man with the same heart. And the pain of him inside her and the pleasure of him inside her – before the planes and the roaring and the death. And the fields full of flowers, turning within them, carving out a dream. 

A brother who was killed. A man above her sobbing with grief. A bicycle and a bell and Jin's decision – to human bombs and ships and to Americans everywhere. To news on the radio, to her mother's words, to stitching and stitching and stitching the fabric on the flag. Stitching the world together. Stitching the bands the men wore to get all bloody as their heads smashed to bits. The sound in the city of gunfire and ruin and her father telling her to run when she saw lights.

Now she's seeing lights. She's seeing lights and fear and she needs to run, because her kneecaps aren't broken like her father's were and because there's nothing holding her back. And so without another thought she feels her feet move, she feels herself running from the light and the fire. Her hand doesn't tug on Jin's so she knows that he's running, too.

\---

Jin and Reio walk for what feels like another two hours. Time doesn't move the same way here but Jin misses being able to account for his movements. He never liked to waste his own time. This place feels like a giant waste of his life – if only because he loses time at the same rate that he loses memories. He can't afford to squander either.

“The only way Ami could have woken him up,” Reio says. “Was to agree to wait for him. Break off her engagement and wait for a man almost certain to die. Would any woman do that?”

“I never knew him,” Jin says. “I thought I did – I thought he was all about sex, all about...comedy. He didn't tell me he loved her. He spoke of fucking and of looking at her with kind eyes. And all the time, he was...infatuated. He continued living for her. He turned around for her.”

“Like you did for Emiko,” Reio says. 

“Emiko was always mine,” Jin says. “From the moment I met her, she was mine. I couldn't look at any other girl. There was never going to be anybody else, if it took me my entire life. If she'd been engaged to somebody else, I'd have been destroyed. I turned around because I had hope and a woman who was going to be there for me.”

“You think Ami turned him down?”

“I think if she had said yes, he would have followed me out. He didn't follow me out. If he turned around once thinking that Ami would wait, he would have done it again and again and again. She turned him down and he couldn't turn around and go back to nothing.”

“You don't know what he did. You don't know he didn't turn around.”

“I don't,” Jin says. “I don't know what happened. But he wasn't there. I flew out and he wasn't there. I looked for him. I kept looking for him.”

“So we're back to whether she knew or not.”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “We're back to that. Fuck, I just want a sign. I just want to know. I feel like my memories of him aren't solid. I see him as this guy who lied and who held things back, who held all these twisted thoughts inside himself. He had a veneer of confidence, of being relaxed and content within himself and yet all the while...”

“People aren't always who they appear to be,” Reio says. “You know that.”

“I know,” Jin says. “I just – we've walked for weeks, it feels like. This doesn't ever end, does it? We don't know anything. We're piecing together lives, here. We're trying to read between the lines of life. This is screwing with everything I believed I knew and I can't _take_ that, Reio, I-”

“That's what you said you had to do,” Reio says. “For Emiko. When I met you you said you'd do anything. Everything you're giving up now is leading you back to her. So take it. That's what men do. We fight dragons to save girls. Like we used to do as kids in the fields. You're fighting a dragon right now. So shut up and draw your sword and kill the bastard so you can go home.”

“What colour is the dragon?” Jin laughs.

“Red,” Reio says. “I'm sure it's Emiko's most hated colour. I'm sure she's terrified of this big hulking dragon and you're all she's got. So slay the fucking thing, alright?”

“And she'll be there when I wake up?”

“She'll be there when you wake up.”

“You're certain?”

“I'm dead,” Reio laughs. “If I don't know everything, who does?”

\---

They keep running until they can't breathe anymore, until the horizon is just a blur of movement, until the stars dance into each other above their heads. Slowly the memories become a blur too and Emiko is able to look across at Jin. He wears life on his face and it's pale, at that. She recognises immediately that he's living somewhere else, too. 

“I heard gunfire,” he manages. “I felt gunfire through the wings and I turned around. I turned around because I was scared of dying. Of losing you. I turned the plane around. It took the shot to make me do it – before then I was nowhere, thinking...still thinking I'd honour you. And then the bastards shot at me. And then I turned around.”

“Southend meant something,” she says. “It's in my head but I can't piece it together, I can't – it meant something. Why did it mean something? It was written on the ground and we didn't see it, I see it now, I see-”

“It was the name of the station,” Jin says, slowly. The sign materialising in his mind. Was the word there all along? He stops and the ground tugs but he doesn't care. “We got off at Southend station. That was where the train stopped.”

“I thought it was about me and that website,” she says. 

He looks at her and for a moment, she feels as though he sees right through her. There's a flicker of something in his eyes and she can't breathe – maybe he knows, more than he should ever have known. Her worst fear, realised. But he says nothing more about it. The flicker is gone as soon as it appears. 

“It was the station,” he says. “It was a location. I didn't see it. I see it now. What does that mean? Have we come North?”

“I think so,” she says. She puts her hand on his arm. “Jin,” she says. “We're not sinking anymore.”

He looks at the ground and then around at the world. “It's still dark,” he says. “Everything is the same but we're not sinking anymore.”

She comes closer to him, following his gaze. “It feels good just to stop,” she whispers.

“Yeah,” he says. And then, his body stiffens.

“Emiko,” he says.

“A dragon?” she asks. 

“No,” he says, as she turns around. “A plane. Look – a plane. Where the fuck did that come from?”

They stand and take in the sight of the plane. It's buried into the black ground, a sight of wrecked metal and colour. She takes a tentative step towards it. The right wing is blown to pieces and the nose is crinkled with impact. The ground is deep and dark from the collision point outwards, in small circles of destruction. Inside the plane, the compass and gauges are all broken. He joins her, back behind her, warm and reassuring.

“A plane,” he says. “I saw a plane and here, a plane.”

She nods, slowly. “Jin,” she says. “There are letters inside.”

“Take them,” he says. “Take them. We need them. This is what we're here to find.”

She reaches into the plane with his hold, his hands around her waist. She grabs the nearest one and when he lifts her down, she turns to him and they stand heart to heart. She can feel his warmth through her clothing. With shaking hands, she unfolds the first letter. 

“To Ryo,” she reads. “Ryo? Your Ryo?”

Jin looks thoughtful, horrified, wracked with disbelief. “No,” he says. “That doesn't make sense.”

“To Ryo,” she repeats. “Dreams are meant to happen at night. Not during the day. If you're dreaming during the day then you're wasting your life. If you dream all day then what do you have left to get you through the night?

You must wake up. But I can't be the person who does this for you. I can't turn day into night. I can't turn light into dark. I can't be the one you need. I love you terribly and for this reason and this reason alone I must write to you and tell you so. 

We dreamt a lot of things together, but now it's time to live. Not in the dark, not in the wonderland we've created – but life. Real and true. 

If you come back to me in this life, then I'll know you've awoken from whatever it is possesses you. It isn't love but fear and obsession. You're preoccupied with your own fate, not with your love for me. If you come back to me, I will live and love with you in the daylight. Otherwise, I sorrowfully let you go to forge your way in the darkness. 

A field of dreams is no match for a field of _life_.

Ami.”

 

When she opens her eyes, Jin is gone. When she opens her mouth to speak, her voice is gone. She covers her mouth with her hand as she slumps by the cold side of the plane. The world is dark, the stars are dangerous and she's bitterly, bitterly alone.

 

“Now do you see why love isn't worth bothering with?” Ryo says.

“Where is Emiko?” Jin says, turning around and around.

“Sometimes love asks more of you than you're prepared to give,” Ryo says. “I wasn't prepared to give more than I could. It didn't hurt. It didn't hurt at all. It didn't mean anything. I hope she's happy. I hope she got her life.”

“Emiko,” Jin says. “Ryo, stop fucking around – what are you talking about? You don't love Ami. You're cheating on Ami. You talk about her like she's nothing to you and-”

“I'm a coward,” Ryo says. “I've always been a coward. I was a coward then and it seems I'm still one now.”

“What does it all mean?” Jin asks. “Why are you here? Why are you here with me? I was with Emiko. We got on a train and we ended up here – how did you get here? Is this the music? Is that what did this?”

“You didn't get here on a train,” Ryo says. “You got here by plane. I shot you down, you idiot. I shot your wing apart. So you'd turn around. You still had it in you. I didn't. And I watched as you turned away and I thought – thank God. At least one of us can wake up. At least one of us can stop dreaming. It was always going to be you.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Jin says, desperately. “I don't know what you mean. It wasn't a plane, it was a train. Where is Emiko?”

“Listen to him,” Reio says. “Jin, listen to him.”

“Reio?” Jin asks. “What the fuck are you doing here? I was with Emiko – I met her on a train. You're supposed to be back in my apartment. At school. Somewhere, not here. I'm dreaming. I must be dreaming. But it was so real-”

“It was a plane,” Reio says. “You crashed into the cliff-face. You turned around for Emiko and she needs you back. Listen to Ryo.”

Jin looks at Ryo, his face wet and his throat burning. “This isn't real,” he says.

“The train isn't real,” Ryo says. “The guitars and the music and the girl who showed you her body, none of it is real. You got here by plane. You need to get out again. Emiko is waiting for you. You married her and she's waiting for you.”

“Emiko is here,” Jin says. “She's waiting by the plane.”

“That's not real,” Ryo says. “You have to leave that behind.”

“This is my life,” Jin says. “That is my whole _life_. How do you just leave that behind?”

“It isn't your life,” Ryo says. “You have to believe that. Your life is beyond this. This is a dream. This is a field of dreams. Beyond it, there's life. That's what Ami meant.”

“But this is all I know,” Jin says.

“Jin,” Reio says. “He's right. Ryo is right. You have to go back to Emiko. The Emiko here isn't real – you've got to know the remnants of her. The person who lost you and now can't love. The one who doesn't understand her place in the world. Neither of you know who or where you are, and that's because you don't belong here. You have to go back.”

“We're not real?”

“Not as you know it,” Ryo says. “Go back, Jin. Wake up. You have to wake up. Wake up, wake up. She needs you.”

“I can't,” Jin says, panic-stricken. “I can't. This is my life. You can't just give up on your life.”

“Yeah, you can,” Ryo says. “That's what we signed up for, isn't it? We signed up to be pilots, to be gods. To give up our lives so that others could live forever. And you came so fucking close, you can do this now. You have to trust me. This isn't like the war. This isn't a game. It's real.”

“Emiko needs you,” Reio says.

Jin thinks about the sunrise and the mornings, about the girl in the field who sat and stared, the girl who cried when they met that day by the water. The girl on the screen, the girl who walked past him and whose music he saw in her eyes. The woman he met on the train and the girl cowering by the plane. The flowers he kissed and threw down to earth for her. The woman whose eyes looked up at him, whose body took him in and who shook that day he told her he was going to die for her.

“The morning,” he says. “I told her she was the sunrise. The morning. The daylight. Emiko-”

Ryo is gone. Reio is gone. And when Jin looks around him the world is no longer dark. The stars are no longer out. The horizon stretches before him and the ground is pale. The sky is blue. The air is clean. There's a breeze. And in the corner of the world, the crack of the earth is unfolding and the sun is starting to squeeze through. The first sun he's seen in such a long time. The first life he's seen in such a long time.

He turns to look at the plane. It isn't buried in the ground. The ground is a brilliant white and the nose isn't crinkled. It isn't black, there are no black circles in the earth where the collision happened. The plane is shining in the morning light. He can see the sun shining on it.

When he looks at it, it isn't the sun at all. Emiko turns to him. She's wearing a pale blue robe with white flowers on it. Her hair is loose around her big dark eyes. When she turns to him, her eyes are wet with tears.

“I told you that you were the sunrise,” he says. “I told you that you were the morning.”

“And I told you,” she says. “That a better world was coming.”

“You told me to turn back,” he says.

“And you did,” she says. “So what now?”

“We go home,” he says. “Now, we go home.”


End file.
